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Kushari is a simple, yet hearty vegetarian dish that is popular on the streets of Egypt. It is often considered poor man’s food because it is cheap and filling.]]>
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Often considered poor man’s food because it is cheap and filling, kushari (koo-shar-ee) showcases the simple flavors of Egypt, making it popular among children and world travelers alike. I always ask for it as soon as my plane lands in Egypt. The red sauce can make or break your kushari experience, yet every Egyptian makes it differently. The sauce is a delicate combination of tomato sauce, cumin, chili, and garlic. Some add vinegar, while others let the fiery chili dominate.

Pat the onions dry with paper towels. Toss them in the cornstarch and set aside.

In a medium pot, combine the lentils with 1½ cups (350 ml) water. Bring to a boil over medium heat, add 1 teaspoon salt, cover the pot, and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the lentils are tender, 10 to 15 minutes, adding up to ¼ cup (60 ml) more water if they dry out.

In a separate medium pot, cook the rice: Bring 1½ cups (350 ml) water to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, add the rice, cumin, and 1 teaspoon salt. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes.

Cook the pasta according to the package instructions. Once cooked, drain, rinse with cold water, and set aside.

In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Fry the onions until they are light brown and crisp, about 10 minutes (you may need to do this in batches to avoid crowding the pan).

In a separate saucepan, make the sauce: Heat the olive oil. Add the garlic, cumin, salt, and cayenne pepper, if using, followed by the vinegar. Once you smell a rich aroma, add the tomato sauce, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a slow simmer and cook until it thickens slightly, about 10 minutes. If you prefer a thinner sauce, you may wish to mix in up to ¼ cup (60 ml) water.

To serve, place the pasta on a dish. Top with the rice, then the lentils, and then the onions. Serve the warm sauce on the side.

Brenda Abdelall is an Egyptian American, born and raised in the culturally diverse city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her love for Egyptian food grew each summer during her childhood visits to Egypt, which included visits to Alexandrian coastal cities, rural villages, and the growing metropolis of El Mansoura. After watching her grandmother bake fresh bread and her aunts roll grape leaves with perfection, Brenda has found the kitchen to be her creative outlet. She runs an award-winning Middle Eastern food blog, “midEATS,” and she teaches Middle Eastern cooking classes in Northern Virginia.

He also likes to move. I’ve interviewed a lot of people, but nobody else has interrupted a discussion to ask, “Can I stand up?” and then kept on answering my questions while pacing to and fro as I nodded from my swiveling office chair.

I first met him in 2012, when he led me on an architectural tour around his home city of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (uae). My notebook that day was a sweat-spattered mess of scribble as I scampered to keep up with him.

This time I tracked him down to talk art at the Arab World Institute in Paris. Al Qassemi, 40, is among the leaders of a cultural shift that over the last decade has brought modern and contemporary art from the Arab world to global attention.

“I remember the first work I bought, [a painting of] a door by [Emirati artist] Abdul Qader Al Rais,” he says. “It was in an exhibition in the spring of 2002, and he painted it a couple of months before. I just thought, ‘This is a real interesting guy. Let’s buy his work.’ It’s a watercolor—he really is a master of watercolor—and I liked that he had drawn an old door and window in the uae. That was the beginning.”

First, to mark traps for the unwary: “Sultan” is his given name, not a title, even though branches of the Al Qassemi family rule both Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, two of the seven emirates that comprise the uae. Even more confusingly, the amir of Sharjah is an exact namesake, except that in English, the amir spells it “Sultan Al Qasimi.” As a result, despite keeping his father’s given name Sooud, Al Qassemi is sometimes mistaken—particularly online—for the amir.

But working as a columnist, political speaker and social-affairs analyst has given Al Qassemi his own public profile. His social-media reach grew rapidly after 2011 when, as a non-resident fellow at the Dubai School of Government, he garnered worldwide attention for tweeting real-time translation and commentary in English on fast-moving news events from the Middle East.

Invitations to lecture followed, along with appearances on cnn, bbc and other news media, and bylines in global publications from Foreign Policy to The New York Times.

His Twitter followers number half a million, though he tells me that lately the interactions have become “overwhelming,” forcing him to pull back. Shortly after our meeting, he stopped tweeting altogether, deactivated his 80,000-follower Facebook account and capped his Instagram feed to his existing 23,000 followers.

“My use of social media has changed. I’m not posting breaking news [anymore]; it’s predominantly culture. I post about art,” he says.

This is where Al Qassemi is creating even deeper impact. In 2010 he established the Barjeel Art Foundation, based on his own collection. Barjeel has since grown to become one of the most dynamic art institutions in the region, in part through its continuous program of exhibitions in Sharjah and beyond. It exists to overturn common perceptions of Arab art as derivative (or nonexistent), and to expand knowledge by promoting hitherto underappreciated genres to galleries and art markets around the world, and to individuals via its encyclopedic website.

Buoyed by recent experience teaching a spring 2017 workshop on Middle Eastern art at New York University (nyu), he talks eloquently of art’s long history in Arab countries, of how the region’s first art exhibitions in the modern era took place in Egypt in the 1870s and how the opening of the first art schools in the region in 1906 was fueled by artists from minority religious communities as well as support from the grand mufti of Egypt, Muhammad Abduh.

From starting out collecting only the newest contemporary art, Al Qassemi has become an unabashed modernist.

“I still like work from the last two decades,” he says, “but we’re looking now at the first half of the 20th century, and absolutely my favorite decade for art, the 1960s.

“That was an incredible decade in the Arab world. People saw art as a way to push back against the remnants of colonialism. Governments were supporting artists. They understood the importance of culture. So you see Iraqis like Shakir Hassan Al Said and Jawad Salim; you see Egyptians like Hamed Ewais and Abdel Hadi El Gazzar; Lebanese like Saloua Raouda Choucair and Chafic Abboud, and on and on—a lot of great artists using art to create a new [national] identity. I love this. It was an expression of a modern, independent, confident [outlook], which we don’t see in 1980s or 1990s works.”

Al Qassemi’s profile hasn’t gone to his head. Quite the reverse. In naming his foundation, he chose an Arabic word with deep cultural resonance locally. Barjeel means “wind tower,” a feature of traditional architecture that is distinctive to the uae and its broader region.

“I have not put my name on this institution. People may know me as a writer, but they know Barjeel [independently]. Or they may know Barjeel but not me. I don’t matter,” he says.

Is he doing anything different from what philanthropic art collectors have long done?

“Art is certainly reaching people now in a way that it wasn’t before. I see myself as a very small player who’s trying to influence as many minds as possible, presenting the Arab world in a different way. There are a lot of galleries, a lot of talks; this tv show I present [“Art Plus”] that has 300,000 to 400,000 viewers per episode, with hundreds of comments from people discussing an artwork. I see Barjeel as a private foundation for the public good.”

That mission, he adds, includes holding a mirror up to society: Barjeel showcases a model of the Arab world’s diversity and inclusivity. Works by artists from the region’s ethnic and religious minorities share space on equal terms with works by establishment figures. Al Qassemi wants to lead by example.

“Sometimes the most difficult conversations we have are amongst ourselves,” he says, ruefully. “I feel [Barjeel] is a positive influence.”

As part of its outreach, Barjeel has loaned works from its thousand-strong collection to dozens of institutions worldwide. Shows in the Middle East have so far included Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait City, Amman and Alexandria. Exhibitions in Singapore and Toronto led to an unprecedented four-part show in London at the prominent Whitechapel Art Gallery that opened in September 2015 and ran for more than a year. Further worldwide exhibitions culminated in a sequence of shows across the eastern us throughout 2017.

“If you think of our Whitechapel exhibition, that had 330,000 visitors,” says Al Qassemi. “A third of a million people were influenced, one way or the other—Tehran, 20,000 visitors, Toronto, 60,000 visitors, and so on. I’m happy. I’m astounded, actually.”

When Al Qassemi and I met in Paris, the Arab World Institute was hosting another Barjeel show: “100 Masterpieces of Modern and Contemporary Art.” By the exhibition’s close, nearly 20,000 people had passed through the doors. The institute’s president, Jack Lang, tells me visitor feedback had been enthusiastic.

“Barjeel plays an important role in the cultural landscape of the Arab world,” Lang says.

“Sultan Al Qassemi is building a collection to benefit art history. It is a major study source and promotes better knowledge of the art of the Middle East, through public programs [and also because] the collection’s database is online. That gives easy access to key information on most Arab artists.”

Lang’s thoughts reinforce those of critic and Whitechapel Art Gallery Director Iwona Blazwick, who told ARTnews that the gallery’s Barjeel exhibition was “the first show in the uk to present, in a non-anthropological way, a modern Arab sensibility. What took us so long to get there?”

“Barjeel has succeeded more than any other institution in presenting early 20th-century and post-colonial modern Arab art to mainstream art institutions outside the Arab world,” she says. “It [has helped] contextualize current practices within the trajectory of the region’s long history of art.”

A key question facing Al Qassemi through all this is how best to leverage what has become considerable influence. What should Barjeel’s next move be? He tells me he’d like to build a museum, but then he pivots in mid-thought.

“If I don’t spend for four or five years, I could [do it]. But I think sharing the art is much more important. Right now we have 200 works on loan somewhere in the world, and several exhibitions in the works: India, Mexico, Tunisia. We want to take the art to as many museums as possible. Is it cultural diplomacy? You bet it is! We’re going to counter the stereotypes with everything we’ve got. Imagine if you had a hundred organizations like Barjeel pushing Arab art into international arenas: How would the world perceive [the Middle East] differently?”

With characteristic clarity, though, Al Qassemi also sees the summit of the mountain he is climbing. From Paris he tweeted a snapshot of people in the Musée d’Orsay crowding around Van Gogh’s famous 1889 self-portrait, to which he added his own caption that referenced Arab modernists:“One day, in my lifetime, people will congregate to see the works of Mahmoud Said, Kadhim Hayder, Marwan, Saloua Raouda Chocair, et al.”

Half a million people saw that message on their Twitter feeds. Al Qassemi—whose most recent appointment is to the board of trustees of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art—is out to win opinions, one by one if necessary. And he’s still the fastest walker I’ve ever met.

From 2007 through 2017, Building Bridges allocated $20.4 million in grants ranging from about $15,000 to more than $1 million. In many cases, it chose to serve as one among several sources funding a project, creating opportunities for alliances within communities.

Building Bridges is one of the arms of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, which in turn is part of the larger, New York-based Doris Duke Charitable Foundation that also funds global wellness for children as well as environmental and medical research. Building Bridges exists, to quote its website, “to advance relationships, increase understanding and reduce bias between Muslim and non-Muslim communities nationwide.”

Art connects people because “art opens us up,” says Zeyba Rahman, senior program officer for Building Bridges. “Makes us consider and reconsider positions. Provokes us to think more deeply.”

“One-shot events, one-shot activities, one-shot experiences tend not to be sufficient,” says cultural historian Jack Tchen of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (nyu). Effective educational cultural programs are “always about a process,” and it is important that funders “acknowledge the time and labor, and care that’s needed.” Zeyba Rahman of Building Bridges would agree: “Sustained activity does create measurable impact, but the key word is sustained.” It is a quality Building Bridges looks for in grant applications.

Rahman unabashedly aims to “move the needle for people.” The problem, she acknowledges, is that nobody has devised a foolproof way to identify, much less quantify, just what makes us change our mind about others. Researchers can measure changes in people’s intrinsic biases, but they don’t agree on which tools to use. It is also hard to tease out the active ingredients in a program and correlate these to outcomes. Ask anyone who has filled out a grant request. They sigh. They often have more anecdotes than data. They know things in their gut but can’t prove them.

So what is it they think they know? How does art change us? I set out to find out by taking a close look at four Building Bridges-supported programs, each centered on a different approach: play, laughter, visual appeal and performance.

First stop

Kid Zone

The challenges for Lizzy Martin, director of exhibit development for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, were to represent a range of cultures that identify with Islam and then engage kids from a range of backgrounds. She and her team started with familiar things—a truck, a boat, a shop. With input from art experts and historians, they “layered on culture.” Voilà—a Pakistani jingle truck, an Omani dhow and an Indonesian fruit stand (complete with smelly durian fruits).

Walking into “America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far” at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan in New York is like stepping into a miniature city. Adults notice its plaza, with a fountain and tilework, its row of colorful market stalls and the prow of a boat that fills a corner of the room. Kids see games, props for dress-up and things to climb.

Four-year-old Jonah has been a regular lately. His mom, Micah Spratt, brings him several times a week. Today a long console with pictures of musical instruments catches his attention. As Micah reads the names—“ney, ‘ud (kind of like a guitar, right?), ebana, ghijak, tabla (looks like drums), kora”—Jonah is figuring out the game. He taps “ney,” and a flute sounds. Taps it again—silence. On. Off. Pretty soon, he’s layering melodies of ney with ‘ud and ghijak, and then tapping the tabla on–off–on–off–on, causing bursts of drumbeat to erupt beneath the melody. Jonah smiles. Then runs off to climb the dhow.

Multiculturalism alone, says Tchen, “oftentimes doesn’t do much.” Adults, he explains, need to help children connect new experiences with things or people they already know. Conversations about similarities and differences, he says, are what later enable us to learn to see through stereotypes.

The market area, meanwhile, is buzzing. Six-year-old Luke catches and sells fish in Zanzibar. Three-year-old Fallon fusses with a Senegalese cloth on a tailor’s dummy—when she’s created a full skirt, she declares, “Looks like a tutu now.” And four-year-old Kate, in a red dress dotted with cartoon puppies, stands amid a pile of Moroccan throw rugs with zingy patterns. One she dubs “my bed.” Another, “my yoga mat.” Then, plopping down on a purple-and-white one, she wraps her legs in the red, yellow and black stripes of the other. When she leans back, hands behind her head, she forms a new, dazzling pattern. And she, beaming, knows it.

Micah Spratt doubts that at four, her son Jonah is “making the connection to Islamic culture.” But, she adds, “I think on some level he’s taking in that these things are different—their looks, their sounds. Next time he sees things like these, they’ll be familiar.” Nearby, watching his daughter, four-year-old Kate, Stephen Reznak says his family lives in “a New Jersey town that’s pretty homogeneous.” The exhibit “gives my kids a greater appreciation for the larger world.”

Elsewhere, in a dark viewing room, teenagers manipulate the controls of a console to project 3-D images of mosques onto a curved wall. One moment they’re standing inside New York’s modern mosque at 96th Street. Next, they’re gliding, eyes wide, under eighth-century arches in Córdoba, Spain.

Samin Rafiq looks on. Rafiq is British, Muslim, and recently moved to the us. She came to the museum to give her four-year-old daughter Zoya an outing, and “America to Zanzibar” was an unexpected find. She says she’s delighted to see American teens “having their own reactions to what they see, independent of politics.” As for Zoya, she says, playing in this setting “helps build associations with Islam.”

Rahman thinks “America to Zanzibar” is “a very important player” for Building Bridges. Why? “Being comfortable with our identity and being comfortable with those of others” is crucial for future generations who will “have to be concerned about being global citizens.”

Native New Yorker Nicolle Newby, on the other hand, sought out the exhibition. While her kids, six-year-old Chance and four-year-old Couture, avidly explore, she follows, taking photos of everything from the Tunisian tiles to home-like settings, decorated with photographs, books and mementos of New York Muslim families. There is also a table where Chance and Couture hunch over tablets learning to say and write “My name is …” in Arabic, Bengali, Hausa and more. “I like taking them to a variety of places,” Newby says, “because if kids don’t get out, then they don’t make friends easily with people from other ethnic groups, backgrounds, skin tones.” They also don’t develop a curiosity about themselves—back home, they pepper her with questions about their own Christian heritage.

Second stop

A Four-Story Mural

As the us census counts, metropolitan “Greater Houston” covers more land than the state of New Jersey. It is home to more than 6 million people who altogether speak more than 90 languages. Still, as diverse as Houston is, says Karen Farber, director of the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston, “we’re not always forced to deal with each other.” One reason she championed eL Seed’s mural project, painted in the spring of 2016, was “to provoke a dialogue.”

On the campus of the University of Houston, the internationally renowned “calligrafitti” artist eL Seed climbs onto the platform of a cherry picker, paint can in hand. For several days, this becomes his studio, and the brick wall of the Graduate College of Social Work his canvas.

The can rattles as he shakes it, hisses as he sprays. Black lines loop and crisscross. As the hours pass, the spaces in between fill with yellow, turquoise, orange.

On the wall, eL Seed is writing an Arabic translation of a quote from the city’s namesake, Texas hero Sam Houston: “Knowledge is the food of genius, and my son, let no opportunity escape you to treasure up knowledge.” Not that anyone can read his highly abstracted calligraffiti.

That’s fine, he says. He’s seen people around the world warm to the mere form of Arabic calligraphy, which, he believes, has a power to elicit emotion by form alone. That emotion, he hopes, will challenge biases, “because we live in a time when we have the wrong perception of everybody. Even me. When the university reached me two years ago, I was like, ‘I don’t want to go to Texas!’ You create this drama in your head.”

He—and his mural—were welcomed. No criticism. No protests. Whether in conversations or in social-media posts, people seemed excited that a star of the art world created a site-specific work at their university. The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, which invited eL Seed, staged programs around the mural. Classes discussed it.

Andrew Bayliss at the University of East Anglia’s Psychology Department found that when two people are reacting positively to something they are looking at together, they tend to deem the other person “more trustworthy and more pleasant.” Researchers are now exploring whether this “joint attention” phenomenon applies similarly in social media and other virtual spaces.

Organizers envisioned the artwork sparking impromptu conversations across faiths and among Muslims themselves; however, that hasn’t happened, says Emran El-Badawi, who heads the university’s Middle Eastern Studies Program. Maybe it was unrealistic to expect it would. He says the campus is so comfortable in its diversity and has so much public art that people “take this mural and initiative for granted.” Its presence here does not challenge how people see themselves: It confirms it.

Yet, having an Arabic mural be no big deal might just be the big deal. It says that Arabic is an accepted part of an ever-growing American fabric. That’s a powerful theme, and El-Badawi says colleagues at other institutions have contacted him to pick his brain as they contemplate similar initiatives.

Third stop

Online

“Halal in the Family” marked a step outside the comfort zone for Building Bridges, says Rahman. But she and her team liked its deeper message and its potential to reach so many people.

I log onto halalinthefamily.tv and hit “play,” launching the web-tv comedy series about a fictional Pakistani Muslim family living in a generic white-majority suburb. With four episodes that each runs five to six minutes, it’s a compact immersion that takes aim at religion-based bullying, fear-mongering, stereotyping, profiling … you name it. From all sides. Originally intended to be a Muslim parody of the “The Cosby Show,” it ends up closer to “All in the Family” with the main character, named Qu’osby, as blinkered and cringe-inducing as Archie Bunker ever was—and sometimes worse.

Lillian LaSalle is founder and director of Sweet 180, which produced the series. “There are people on our advisory board who said, ‘You can’t say that,’” she says, referring to any number of jokes in the script. But co-creators Aasif Mandvi and Miles Khan, formerly of “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, held firm. “To do parody and satire properly, we’re going to say some things that are going to offend people.”

The Perception Institute showed 2,344 viewers “Halal in the Family” and an excerpt from a narrative documentary about Islamophobia called “Truth Over Fear.” The institute found the documentary slightly more effective in getting people to question assumptions, but then they looked at how many people each one reached online. The film had attracted 10,000 views, while “Halal in the Family” had racked up 620,000, plus 18,000 Facebook “likes” and 2.5 million posts.

And they do. For example, to fit his benighted notions of American identity, Qu’osby makes an embarrassing show of liking foods Islam forbids. And when a girl bullies his daughter over her religion on Facebook, Qu’osby doesn’t give the bully a moral lesson; rather, he upbraids the offender to “get her stereotypes right!”

In another episode Qu’osby meets his kids’ math teacher, who is white, and played by Jordan Klepper. It’s instant bromance as they bond over a “’68 Mustang fastback with a 302 two-barrel V8” and other memes of Americana. When the teacher mentions he needs to go because he’s heading over to the mosque, Qu’osby discovers his new friend’s name isn’t “Wally” but Waleed. He feels duped, and he jumps to the ridiculous conclusion that Waleed is faking his identity to spy on Qu’osby. This makes Qu’osby react so weirdly that Waleed then suspects him of reporting to the fbi. The scene resolves with them all laughing at the absurdity of thinking they were spying on each other—a shot filmed through binoculars by someone peering from outside the window.

Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran says laughter evolved from a signal our very distant ancestors used to broadcast that all was okay. Imagine this: A man spots something moving in the shadows. He tenses. A kitten mews. He laughs. Hearing him, the others relax. This is effective, wordless vocal communication. Grace Aneiza Ali, who teaches art and policy at nyu, believes comedy can look at a specific, difficult situation—say, the tension between two immigrant parents and their locally born children—and universalize it so that everyone, laughing, connects with it.

Every episode is over the top. Some gags don’t hit my laugh button. But they always make me roll my eyes at the inanity of the prejudices they pillory. “Halal” intends to be funny and activist: Right under the video, the site provides statistics and information about problems Muslims face, along with links to find out more. LaSalle says nobody has tracked yet how many viewers have followed up, but one thing’s certain: the industry has. The series won a Peabody-Facebook Futures of Media Award, and Turner Broadcasting System (tbs) commissioned a pilot script for an animated adaptation. Though tbs did not pick it up, the production team is shopping it around. It won’t be parody or satire, LaSalle says, but a warmer comedy about a Muslim family trying to fit into in a small Arkansas town. If produced, television viewers too might soon be laughing with Muslim neighbors—and sometimes at them—because, after all, the characters are bound to have plenty of blind spots, too.

Fourth stop

On Stage

Some 60,000 people of Somali origin live in Minnesota, comprising the most recent of the many groups of immigrants—among them Scandinavians, East Europeans, Asians and Latinos—that have settled the state that was for centuries home to Dakota Sioux and Ojibwa tribes.

I head west and north to Minneapolis, where the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood is known—by its residents and outsiders—as “Little Mogadishu.” More emigrés from Somalia live here than in any other single place in the us. Arriving, I look for the marquée of the Cedar Cultural Center across from Al-Karama Mall on Cedar Avenue. For close to 30 years, it has hosted musicians from around the world. More recently, it has also developed into an important meeting point for Somali and non-Somali communities.

Minnesota may be the “land of 10,000 lakes,” but Somalia, says guide Abdi-rahman Hassan, is “the land of 1,000 poets.” He works at the Somali Museum of Minnesota, which opened in 2013. “Somalia is a very musical culture,” Hassan says, pointing to a display of instruments. “So some people will listen to songs as long as they’re Somali or as long as they’re positive.”

What changed? In 2014 The Cedar (as people refer to it) teamed up with Augsburg University, a Lutheran institution with a music department that had been working with local Somali singers. Together they launched a series of month-long residencies for Somali performers. They named it Mid-nimo, which in Somali means “unity.”

A first-year student at the College of Saint Benedict, Julia Pedron exudes curiosity and hope. “There are a lot of misconceptions about Somalis’ culture and religion,” she says. “I wish everybody could have the experience we had of actually getting to meet with Waayaha Cusub, getting to experience a little bit of their culture.” When Shiine talked about being shot, she adds, “it was like I was speaking to a piece of history.”

When I visit in the fall of 2016, before visas became almost impossible to obtain, Midnimo is in its seventh cycle of residencies. Four hip-hop artists are visiting from Europe, Shiine Akhyaar Ali, Dalmar Yare, Lihle Muhidin Nur and Digriyow Abdi. In 2002 they were all refugees in Kenya. The youngest was 11, the oldest 17. They had seen pals join the militias tearing their homeland apart. Bored and scared, they started rapping for peace and against extremism. They called themselves Waayaha Cusub, “New Era.”

No matter their background, students “have a fuzzy understanding of the Somali experience,” says Darlene St. Clair, director of the St. Cloud State University Multicultural Resource Center. But “music is especially engaging,” and they come away from Midnimo classes with a sharper sense of “what it’s like being a refugee, the extra pressures, anxieties and fears.”

I also meet four local non-Somali instrumentalists: keyboardist deVon Gray, drummer Joey Van Phillips, bassist Jim Anton and guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker. The organizers have brought them in to play backup for Waayaha Cusub. On a Thursday morning I join them in a red-brick building on Augsburg’s campus. In a large classroom, the musicians all sit with their backs to the blackboard as students, all music majors, trickle in. Helped by an interpreter, the Somalis introduce themselves. When the class starts, the students are attentive, but there’s no feeling of chemistry. Then Joey taps out a tempo. Shiine motions the class to stand. They’re going to help him sing a song.

The refrain Shiine teaches the students is “watch out for your people / watch out for your land.”

Tchen uses the example of musicians to illustrate the crucial role played by pleasure and emotion. Because musicians love their own instruments, it is easy for them to appreciate the way instruments from another culture are played and the sounds they produce. To have that kind of experience, Tchen believes, is a key to appreciating difference “and not to just simply want to subsume it, dominate it, eradicate it or disavow it.”

The students mangle the Somali lyrics, laugh, and try again. It doesn’t take long before Waayaha Cusub is calling out verses, students are belting the refrain, and everyone is jamming.

Back in their seats, conversation now flows. Students speak about music as something they love, study and dissect. Waayaha Cusub members talk about their hip hop as mission: They sing to keep Somali youth from falling prey to militants. Death threats, an assassination attempt, the disorientation of refugee life—nothing has deterred them. The students want to know about the Somali kids Waayaha Cusub reaches; the Somali singers want to hear about the students’ goals as future teachers and musicians.

The local Somali community generally likes Midnimo, says Amano Dube, director of the Brian Coyle Community Center. But it is divided over Waayaha Cusub’s anti-militant messages. Some feel these inadvertently reinforce anti-Somali and even anti-Muslim sentiments by implying Somalis are “more susceptible to having children turn bad.” Others, however, believe the frank talk helps steer young people in good directions.

By residency’s end the singers have run 16 college classes, conducted seven workshops for youth and worked with pupils at four public schools. In many cases, they see the same audiences for two or three sessions. Then, in a few months, another group of artists will come, and with them new music and new stories.

Scientists have confirmed what we have always suspected: Interacting with people who are different from us alters the way we think about them. Researchers term this “intergroup contact,” and study after study has shown that sharing a positive experience reduces prejudice primarily by reducing anxiety and increasing empathy.

With school-age kids, the jamming segues into writing, and they come up with their own lyrics and perform for their mates, some from long-settled Minnesota families and some newbies. They rap about likes and dislikes, aspirations and fears. Some wriggle and giggle and, first time around, take a pass; others dive right in. As one Somali-born kid struts his stuff, Shiine whispers: “If they do not see they’re talented, they can join gangs.”

The Cedar Cultural Center invited Mohamed Sallam to evaluate Midnimo. I meet him as he observes a class. Midnimo isn’t just about art, he explains. “It’s also about artists’ narratives,” he says, and how these come across is extremely important. He is on the lookout for signs that audiences might interpret individual personal stories as representing all Somalis, or even all Muslims in diaspora. Instead, he sees Midnimo preempting this by hosting a succession of different artists, all of whom are coached on how best to present their personal stories in Minnesota. As a result, Midnimo works, he says, because it “complicates the notion of what it means to be Muslim.”

What I see is a building of trust—East African kids discovering they have something to say. College students learning from Somali singers and vice versa—local Somali youths attending a Waayaha Cusub performance in a venue they’ve never been in with white neighbors they’ve never met. Trust also grows between the Somali visitors and their American backups. At first, deVon says, they rehearsed in a kind of “awkward dance.” Joey remembers worrying they couldn’t get “the nuances the Somalis are looking for.” So they listened, tried something else, watched for reactions, tweaked, tried again. Gradually, everyone grew more comfortable, and the Americans even started to find ways “to bring our own voices into it,” deVon says. Case in point: At rehearsal one morning, Digriyow asks Jeremy to free-style the beginning of the next song. By this time Jeremy has spent hours listening and experimenting. When he moves to center stage, he lets his fingers fly. Heads keep time, faces smile. “We don’t speak English too well,” Shiine later says, “so we don’t talk about a lot of things. But when we’re playing music together, we feel we know each other.”

Last stop

Making Sense of It All

“We’re overriding negative perceptions by showing the diversity of Muslim cultures, the breadth, the depth of them, the richness,” says Rahman. Building Bridges programs also encourage “the younger Muslim population to really get a look at their cultures and take pride.”

Each of the projects that Building Bridges supported drew non-Muslims and Muslims alike, and in different ways each offered multiple experiences. I saw art engage people mentally and emotionally, then deliver information, foster camaraderie, engender trust, stimulate curiosity and bolster identity. As time went on, it became like watching a cloth being woven, threads—sometimes similar, sometimes wildly different—crisscrossing to create ever-varying designs.

We know from the news that, all around the globe, the need keeps growing. For Building Bridges’ 2018 grants competition, the number of applications doubled, says Rahman. And we now know enough about laughter, mutual attention, play and the evolution of cultures to begin to understand how art programs can make a real difference.

“Sometimes,” says Jack Tchen, a cultural historian at the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, “we talk about otherness as if it’s a bad thing,” as if the world would be easier if everybody were “like ourselves. And that’s impossible.” What is possible, though, is discovering who others are. Who we are. And what more fun and energizing way than through art which, as Rahman says, leads us to “consider and reconsider our positions” by inviting us to cross a bridge to—let’s go find out.

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“If you imagine French cuisine as a tree,” says food historian Emmanuel Perrodin, “the leaves are in Paris, but the roots reside in Marseille”—fed by 2,600 years of migrations from the Mediterranean and beyond.
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Five hundred years later the Mediterranean became Rome’s nexus of trade and empire, and Marseille became one of its maritime centers. Now, mucem exhibits olive-oil amphorae from Anatolia, soapmaking paraphernalia from Syria, and sailing charts that show how to navigate from Algiers without running aground on the island of Mallorca.

Atop the museum, Emmanuel Perrodin, Marseille’s leading culinary historian, sips black coffee. The panorama over France’s third-largest city takes in the seemingly limitless sea, ramparts of 17th-century forts and a few cereal silos from the 1920s. Passenger ferries chug to and from the modern successors of the Roman trading ports of Béjaïa and Annaba in Algeria, as well as the Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia.

“Our city has a particular geography,” says Perrodin. “My favorite Marseillais saying is, ‘First you have the sea, then the city, and beyond that is another country called France.’”

Perrodin explains that, like Alexandria, Egypt, Marseille was a “lighthouse city.” A key commercial gateway, a port city that has attracted all comers, it thrived as a polyglot trading colony while Paris was still just a village. Believed to have been established around 600 bce by Greeks from Phocaea (now Foca) on the west coast of Turkey, the city’s more recent arrivals have included Russians, Armenians, and Berbers from Algeria—among the latter the parents of France’s greatest soccer player, Marseille-born Zinedine Zidane. Most recently, in the decades following independence, families from former French colonies have come here, along with many more.

With human traffic came food, and with food came recipes. Dates entered Europe here, says Perrodin, and “arguably” tomatoes and bananas.

“Safeguarding your favorite foods is perhaps the most important cultural act,” he says. “Three times per day you reinforce your cultural identity in your heart—and your stomach.” Most curiously of all, the recipes that came first to Marseille—take North African merguez lamb sausage, for example—would now be eaten by a Cypriot French family in Paris, or by a Congolese French family in Normandy.

“Our national dish is couscous. Tajine [from North Africa] is served in French schools. If you imagine French cuisine as a tree, the leaves are in Paris, but the roots reside in Marseille.”

Seeds of the city’s culinary evolution can be found a few blocks north in the district of Noailles. On the corner of Rue d’Aubagne, one can see a Tunisian leblebi soup store. An Ivorian snack bar sells alocco fish with grilled plantain—and nearby is Marseille’s last remaining ricotta cheese creamery. A young woman with her smartphone tucked into the elastic of her headscarf continues a phone conversation as she shops for fruit. A young boy warns “yalla!” as he weaves his bike down the street, fishing rod in one hand. The roars of scooters and the calls of hawkers render the street a maelstrom of multiculturalism, a 21st-century Babel where one could conceivably order lunch in English, Spanish, Arabic or French.

Such telegenic scenes are backed up by tales of economic necessity. The story of 37-year-old Jiji Azizi, who manages the spice emporium La Palme d’Or, also on Rue d’Aubagne, is a mirror of migration into Marseille. “No one of my generation consciously moved here. We were born here instead.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, she says, the Mediterranean was a more open sea. Azizi’s father was one of seven brothers and sisters sharing a home in Africa’s northernmost city, the Tunisian port of Bizerte. “In that position you just moved to France,” Azizi says. Fortunately, his fragrant store was a success. “Armenians, Algerians, Greeks—we all eat the same halvah, dolma and all the rest.” Azizi proudly claims she is Marseillaise, before being of Tunisian roots or French citizenship. “Perhaps it’s like Italians in New York. Despite being there for one century, some people are Sicilian first, then American second.”

Such stories are commonplace. Bêline Sy arrived in Marseille aged 18 months in 1979. Her parents lived in Vietnam’s southern colonial resort of Dalat, a leafy town that, once part of French Cochinchina, was base for soldiers of Arabian and African origins serving in the French Army. “When I return there, I get laughed at because I speak Vietnamese with a Marseillaise accent,” she says. In the mid-1960s waves of American soldiers came to her family’s town. A decade later Sy’s parents fled from communist authorities with their nine children.

The family’s Marseille fruit stall grew to become Tam-Ky, now the area’s largest international food emporium, on the bustling Rue Halle Delacroix. Sy’s checkout now rings orders of Mauritian piments, Madagascan kumbawa citrus and Indonesian pepper to patrons from Senegal, Cambodia, Mali and much of the rest of the world. A final novelty is the curious circumflex above Sy’s forename, Bêline. “In Vietnam we wear conical hats,” she explains, “so I put one on the ê of my name. When you move to a new country, you can do anything you want.”

Other recently settled residents are plying their wares through France, like Mediterranean traders of two and half millennia before. Around the corner from Azizi and Sy, down past a sweet-smelling shop selling mahjouba—crepes, North African-style—another with flipflops and a couple of halal butchers, Joseph Azzi set up his Le Cedre du Liban (Cedar of Lebanon) bakery in 1995.“Lebanese are everywhere,” says Azzi. “Saudi, Africa, London, Brazil.”

He walks past crates of pomegranate molasses to fire up his flatbread machine. With a whirr and a clunk, the timeless, round Arab loaves bake and then cool along a 15-meter conveyor that snakes underneath the flour-dusted ceiling. Stacks of flatbreads are sealed into plastic bags before being couriered along former Roman roads—now fast autoroutes—to Nice in the east and Béziers in the west. The fact they are eaten with restaurant falafil or supermarket couscous is testament to Marseille’s status as France’s ville carre-four—its crossroads city.

Yet now, as it has been for centuries, arrival also often means struggle. Some of Marseille’s most recent newcomers arrive with more recipes than official papers or networks of helpful friends. Some learn quickly they can rely on Fatima Rhazi, a grandmother originally from Morocco who acts as a kind of great aunt to Marseille’s migrant women. Her organization, Femmes d’Ici et d’Ailleurs Marseille (Marseille Women from Here and Elsewhere) was formed in 1994 to foster dialogue through food.

“Some new ladies are timid for all sorts of reasons, but when cooking in our communal kitchen they open up. Believe me, women have the same problems all over the world,” says Rhazi. By sharing recipes, they learn food preparation, hygiene and language skills useful for both household management and employment. And it works: 1,257 previously unemployed people who have passed through Rhazi’s workshop are now in paid work.

Rhazi’s backstreet office-kitchen includes a 500-book library with (titles such as La Cuisine du Monde and Délices du Maroc) that serves as a recipe vault for almost every Mediterranean, Arabic and African dish. Some hand-me-down methods remain handwritten in Arabic. Others reside on the hard drive of the association’s creaking computer. “I’m from Morocco, which has three couscous recipes, but our association regularly makes 11 different varieties,” Rhazi says.

This culinary archive at Femmes d’Ici et d’Ailleurs Marseille is important also because, as an entirely self-financed organization, it is a database that helps support large-scale catering for weddings, birthdays and other events, all of which help pay for the organization’s many services. When mucem hosts 300 guests for an exhibition opening, they often call Rhazi first. At such times, she then calls upon volunteers who hail anywhere from the steppes of Mongolia to the golden sands of Ghana to work the 20 gargantuan cooking pots and countless tajines in the adjoining kitchen. “Customers can also dine in the upstairs restaurant. We call our cuisine oriental. The term is meaningless,” Rhazi says with a smile, “but it pushes all the right buttons.” Dishes can include light-as-air black-eyed pea accara fritters from Senegal and herbed Moroccan chicken with a lemon confit sauce.

Rhazi’s own early travels influenced her palate, too. Raised a few miles from the Algerian border in Oujda, around four decades ago she was Morocco’s 200-meter and 400-meter women’s running champion, and this took her to competitions throughout the Mediterranean. She speaks, for example, about a Sephardi dish from the Tunisian island of Djerba called skhina. For religious reasons, Tunisia’s Jewish community required a Saturday feast but could not prepare food on the Friday Sabbath. So the recipe of eggs, rice, spices and meat is slowcooked overnight into a state of delicious caramelization.

Recognition of Rhazi’s work, and by extension Marseille’s culinary mélange, came in 2009 by presidential decree. France’s then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, himself of Greek and Hungarian parentage, together with Justice Minister Rachida Dati, who is the second of 12 children of Moroccan and Algerian heritage, visited Femmes d’Ici et d’Ailleurs Marseille.

To Rhazi’s consternation, Sarkozy and Dati did not give her a check: Instead they knighted her, declaring her chevalier de la légion d‘honneur, the nation’s highest order of merit.

“I am a knight without a horse,” she jokes. Then with her characteristic self-confidence, she asked France’s president to assist 17 migrant families who were struggling without the correct paperwork. “I’m tough because I have six brothers. That’s why I fight for women.”

At a gourmet level, it is migrant and migrant-fusion recipes that can be found all across Marseille. The restaurant atop mucem serves a prime example with its culinary deconstruction of the famed city dish bouillabaisse, a “poor man’s stew” that infuses imported saffron and tomatoes with local rockfish. Then there are hipster-Maghreb patisseries such as MinaKouk that create avant-garde pigeon pastilla as well as Franco-Arabian macarons. Marseille tourism bosses sell the city by inviting food bloggers from across France, North America and Asia. An Instagram generation strolls the street snapping Tunisian favorites like wafer-thin, oozy-egg brick à l’œuf, or Turkish mantı, a ravioli topped with creamy yogurt. Marseille chefs of every background are grafting contemporary takes onto a culinary movement that first set sail in Aegean triremes 2,600 years ago.

Nowhere is this trend more compelling than at AM par Alexandre Mazzia, a restuarant a block from the Stade Vélodrome, home of the top-ranked soccer squad Olympique de Marseille. Here Michelin-starred chef Alexandre Mazzia has turned Marseille’s migrant flavors, including Turkish sumac and Nigerian manioc, into world-beating fare. “My own story is typical of Marseille,” says Mazzia. His paternal grandfather was an Italian saxophonist who made a mean saffron risotto, while his mother’s father was a Corsican fisherman. “Therefore, it was psychologically easy for my Marseille family to emigrate to Congo in the 1970s.” There, Mazzia’s father took a job selecting hardwood timber for global export from the rainforest of Mayombe.

Mazzia was born in 1976 in Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo. Like Marseillais of other backgrounds, he grew up eating saka-saka, a pesto made of manioc, fish and palm oil. “When I came to live in France at age 15, I felt at home in Marseille,” he says. “Indeed, my dishes are a metaphor for the influences every resident transmits.” And what fusions they are: Algae chips dotted with sweet-potato jellies, topped with bottarga roe; langoustines wrapped in balls of tapioca, a West African staple, that pop in the mouth like caviar and a frozen Franco-Maghreb gem of raspberry and harisa, whose flavor serenades like Mediterranean waves and then sears like the Sahara.

It’s a long way from beef bourguignon. As Mazzia says, “People from Paris now come to me. The restaurant is booked solid for the next two months.”

Mazzia now works on culinary projects across the city including private after-hours access to the Musée Cantini gallery of fine art, where paintings like Paul Signac’s “Entrée du Port de Marseille” show steamships delivering goods from across the globe. Mazzia takes inspiration from these canvases’ watery rhythms to create dishes for intelligentsia-based foodways road-tested for centuries by migrants.

“The staff at my restaurant l’AM come from 11 countries, from Comoros to Korea,” he says. That is as many nationalities as fielded by the current Olympique de Marseille soccer team, which has won the Coupe de France trophy a record 10 times.

“The richness of Marseille is its mix of cultures,” he says. “Together we win.”

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Sudan’s capital Khartoum is the gift of not one but two Niles—the White and the Blue—at whose meeting point arose a three-part metropolis.
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Wherever two rivers meet, one often renames the other. In Paris, the Seine takes in the Marne. In Allahabad, the Ganges subsumes the Yamuna. In St. Louis, the Mississippi swallows the Missouri. But in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, the Blue Nile and the White Nile arrive as equals in stature and equivalents in name, so at their confluence they both change their names as they become, for the next 3,000 kilometers to the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile or, in Arabic, bahr al-nil, the Nile Sea.

Khartoum is different in another way, too, because the meeting of two rivers spawned three cities, each on its own bank. To the southeast lies Khartoum proper; to the west Omdurman; and to the northeast Khartoum Bahri (“Khartoum Seaward”). Each has a distinct outward face, origin story and role in the history of the peoples of Sudan, as well as symbolic landmarks to tell its own tale.

To corrupt the famous metaphor Herodotus coined about Egypt, one could say Khartoum is the gift of the two Niles. While South Sudan broke away from Sudan in 2011, taking with it about a quarter of the territory of what had been since 1956 Africa’s largest nation, the tri-city conurbation at the heart of this increasingly parched country might soon be home to more than 10 million people, almost double from just a decade ago, if growth continues apace. Refugees from neighboring nations, including South Sudan, migration from the countryside and natural growth all add up.

Originally a fishing village, Khartoum was largely unrecorded until the Ottoman Turks arrived in the early 1820s under the banner of their independent governors, the khedives of Egypt. Many later Western accounts are largely fictional or self-aggrandizing. These include the 1966 film Khartoum about the death of British General Charles Gordon in 1885 at the hands of Sudanese led by Muhammad Ahmad ibn al-Sayyid, with several of England’s most famous actors in blackface playing Sudanese historical characters. There was also The River War, Winston Churchill’s grim eyewitness record of the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, in which the British recaptured Khartoum at a cost of an estimated 10,000 Sudanese casualties against 47 British.

Khartoum’s settlement by outsiders began as army quarters, consulates and trading posts. In 1862 Samuel Baker arrived with his Hungarian wife, Florence, after a year exploring Ethiopia up the Atbara River and down the Blue Nile, expecting a bit of restful luxury while preparing to ascend the upper White Nile.

But it was not what they had hoped for. “The difference between the view of Khartoum at the distance of a mile, with the sun shining upon the bright river Nile in the foreground, to the appearance of the town upon close inspection, was about equal to the scenery of a theatre as regarded from the boxes or from the stage,” Baker wrote in The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, published in 1867. He was disappointed that up close, “the sense of smell was outraged.” Baker sought out the British consulate, with its rampant lion and unicorn crest over the door, in “the Belgravia of Khartoum,” as he called it.

Residents of that posh London neighborhood would have been surprised to find, as Baker did, chained leopards and loose ostriches inside the compound. And they would be amused that 100 years later the Belgravia brand produced Khartoum’s best dairy products and its logo featured a Guernsey cow.

The logical place to start a visit to Khartoum is at the point of confluence, a small peninsula on the side of Khartoum proper called moqran al-nilayn, the meeting of the two Niles. Here the Blue Nile, its headwaters 1,500 kilometers away in Ethiopia to the southeast, flows sluggishly, and the White Nile, born on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo some 2,300 kilometers south, runs briskly.

A dilapidated family fun park lies near the point, but the view across the waters to Omdurman, Bahri and the flood-prone, paisley-shaped island called Tuti tells Khartoum’s founding story best. It was an ideal site for urban growth: plenty of water to drink and alluvial mud banks for both cultivating and brickmaking along wide rivers for transport south, east and north.

Omdurman in the mid-19th century was just a village with a ferry crossing. But after Muhammad Ahmad ibn al-Sayyid’s successful uprising against Anglo-Egyptian forces, in 1885 it became the capital.

As quoted by historian Robert Kramer in his book Holy City on the Nile, al-Sayyid’s successor, “The Khalifa” Abdullahi ibn Muhammad, announced in 1885 to his countrymen: “O beloved ones ... for the interests of the faith and your guidance and [for] the betterment of your religion, we have thought fit that you should move from Khartoum … dwelling among us with your children and all that belongs to you.”

Omdurman’s symbolic heart today lies in the vicinity of the Khalifa House Museum, once ibn Muhammad’s headquarters. Not far away on the riverbank are the crumbling mud ramparts of an Ottoman-built fort and the SS Bordein, an iron paddle wheeler assembled in 1869 in Cairo from English-made parts.

The British first sent the Bordein to Sudan to assist Samuel Baker’s mission on the Upper Nile, and then it became Gordon’s lifeline during the siege of Khartoum, during which it carried to safety the six volumes of his journals—the last ever heard from him—which became an eponymous classic of Victorian heroic literature after his death. The Bordein was later captured by Sudanese forces, recaptured by Lord Kitchener on the first day of the Battle of Omdurman, and then fell to rust and ruin until the tourism ministry put it on display.

Ahfad University for Women (ahfad means grandchildren in Arabic) is probably Omdurman’s most famous living institution with roots in the rebellion. Established at the turn of the 20th century as a girls’ school by Babikir Badri, a former soldier, it today offers undergraduate and advanced degrees in the social and health sciences.

The founder’s philosophy of schooling is a pragmatic one aimed at everyday problem-solving and support for education as a path to autonomy and independence. This is evident in the university’s continuing efforts to recruit students from marginal areas, including Bejas from the Red Sea hills, Darfuris from the west and Nuba girls from the south.

The campus green buzzes with the voices of students between classes. Psychology major Hind Ismail from Omdurman, rural-education major Reem Tariq Habib from the United Arab Emirates—daughter of a Turkish father and Egyptian mother—and business major Roshan Hasan, daughter of an Indian diplomat who plans to continue her studies at her father’s new post in Japan, are all 19-year-old sophomores. They say that a women’s college gives them the same advantages in terms of intellectual space and confidence that female students seek elsewhere. That Ahfad is part of Women’s Education Worldwide, an international consortium of single-sex universities, is no surprise.

Abdel Moneim Badri, a 77-year-old professor of education at Ahfad, has vivid memories of Omdurman before Sudanese independence in 1956. He remembers swimming in the Nile at the cement steps known as al-nimar (the numbers), so named for the flood-gauge levels painted on each one, and then rubbing his wet body with dust and sand so his mother would not know he had broken his promise to stay out of the water.

“My mother only had two worries, drowning in the Nile and being run over by a tramcar,” he says with a smile. “But we still would swim, and we always played in the tram’s tracks, dodging their wheels. Back then, Omdurman was like a village. Everyone knew everybody, so to walk in the street meant having always to stop and say hello. It was best to stick to the back alleys if you were in a hurry, or did not want to be seen by others.”

If Omdurman is the Arab heart of the capital, representing the history and culture of the Sudanese themselves rather than of their former Ottoman and British colonial rulers, then another important voice in that story is that of a migrant from the countryside. KhairAllah Khair al-Sayyid, a former camel herder and trail boss of export herds to Egypt, hails from Dar al-Kababish in Sudan's central state of North Kordofan. He came to Omdurman during the devastating 1984 drought that killed his own livestock. He eventually bought a lot in Omdurman’s sprawling settlement Dar al-Salam, built his house and started his family.

KhairAllah’s oldest son, 27-year-old Suliman, could not be more unlike his father, who can neither read nor write and only knows that he older than 70. Suliman is studying English at Al-Neelain University in Khartoum and keeps up with the world on social media. The story of Suliman’s younger brother Mohammed is yet another facet of modern Sudan: Mohammed dropped out of high school after catching gold fever, and he has recently graduated from hand-digging deep manholes to drilling, blasting and mechanical earthmoving in surface pits.

“Both may be right or both may be wrong about their future,” says their father. “Who knows where success lies in these times? My camel days are over, and my sons do not even ride them.”

The University of Khartoum, founded in 1902 as Gordon Memorial College, is the pride of Sudan’s educational system. Its main buildings were designed in a cross of neo-Ottoman and Collegiate Gothic styles by the khedive’s personal architect, a Greek named Dimitrius Fabricius Pasha. They contrast with the modernist, sleekly domed examination hall built in mid-century across the lawn.

Ibrahim el-Zein Soghayroun, a history professor, was born in 1936 in Khartoum proper, or as his generation often called it, Khartoum Qibli. (Qibli literally means “toward the qibla,” or toward Makkah, an adjectival form often used in Egypt, where one faces south when praying, and thus its colloquial meaning is “southern.”) He graduated from Hantoub Secondary School, considered the most elite of its day. He remembers fondly when his headmaster L.W. Brown was invited to Buckingham Palace to honor his schoolmate Jaafar Nimeiry, the fourth president of Sudan, who served from 1969 to 1985.

“All the students were proud that our school had been recognized by the queen herself,” he says. “I never felt that Khartoum was just a small town far away from the world. From the post office, you could send a telegram to any place on the globe for just a few piasters.”

Another Khartoum landmark is the Acropole Hotel, founded in 1952 by Greek immigrant Panaghis Pagoulatos and now operated by his sons Athanasios and George. Seventy-two-year-old Athanasios smiles as he remembers the days before independence when the Greek community numbered some 20,000 throughout the country.

“Our Hellenic Club was busy every day with dancing and sports,” he says. “We would take picnics by motorboat from the sailing club to a yellow sand beach at a place called Om Doum (Mother of the Doum Palm) on the Blue Nile. Our tennis and basketball teams were the best in the city.”

The Acropole, a place seemingly out of an Agatha Christie novel, is still fully booked in high season as archeologists head out to the pyramids and temples near Meroë, about 200 kilometers north of the capital. Only the memories of Khartoum’s two other luxury hotels remain from that earlier time, when the British were almost as common on the streets as the Sudanese, before the independent government switched vehicle traffic overnight from left- to right-side driving in a clean break with the colonial past. The Victoria Hotel has been demolished, and the slickly refurbished Grand Hotel is now part of an international chain.

There are four bridges across the Blue Nile between Khartoum and Bahri. At the foot of one is the book-lined office of Jaafar Mirghani, director of the Sudan Civilization Institute and a native son of Bahri. “Do not be deceived by today’s jumbled city,” he says. “What may look like ‘ashwaa’i (haphazard) planning to an outsider is in fact underwritten by history.”

Kitchener laid out his colonial city of Khartoum in a tight grid “from the river to the railroad” and designated Bahri, then largely open ground, for warehouses, dockyards and repair shops, says Mirghani, who remembers its three original villages, or hillas: Hamid, Khojali and al-Sebabi. Dockyard jobs brought migrants from downriver, and their residential quarters sprang up there, too: Danaqla, for people from Dongola; Shelaliyya, for people from the cataracts (shelal in Arabic) on the border with Egypt; and Amlak (after the Arabic word for real estate), for Egyptian office clerks.

From the Bahri train station, a train leaves daily for Shendi near Meroë, the pyramid-rich city that from 800 bce to 350 ce was capital of the Kingdom of Kush, and onward along the Nile to the city of Atbara, now the line’s final destination.

The morning hour of departure is a study in contradictions. A Chinese bullet locomotive pulls five sleek cars on tracks laid down and barely touched since the time of Lord Kitchener. Passengers rush to board for a six-hour trip that by bus takes half that time. Its mere 330-kilometer route is a fragment of what was once Africa’s most extensive railroad network of more than 4,500 kilometers that is now mostly derelict. But to open the Sudan Railways Corporation website—with its “future projects” page—is to glimpse a dream that desperately wants to come true again.

Bahri’s historical mixing of ethnicities from near and far continues today, too. On weekend afternoons in al-Haj Yousef district, young men, the majority of them migrant workers—Fur, Hamar, Arab, but mostly Nuba—from the western provinces gather in an open arena with banked seating for wrestling matches.

The wrestling skills on show are of the highest order. Many of the athletes belong to Greco-Roman and freestyle teams, and they train accordingly, but the technique here is traditional Nuba: in a sand pit with sand freely applied to key grip spots on one’s own body—chest, upper arm, wrist and nape of the neck—that defiantly dares the opponent to grab and attempt take-downs. (This makes it almost an opposite of Turkish oil wrestling, in which a slippery escape is encouraged, but here, such an attitude is seen as retreat.)

The wrestlers are ranked not by weight category but by skill class, from shibli (lion cub, or bottom) to wasit (middle) and faris (knight, or top), and each one belongs to a club. Muhammad Hanu Anima is 18 years old and 80 kilograms, and he belongs to Ittihad al-Burkan, the Volcano Union. His teammate Badri al-Din Marwaha is just five kilograms heavier, but at age 42 and with 30 years of experience, he has attained the rank of faris. The league's two oldest teams are named Usd al-Ghaba, (Lions of the Forest), and Suqur al-Jidyan (Falcons of the Valley, i.e., Secretary birds), and they evoke the same fierce loyalties and rivalries as Omdurman’s soccer clubs al-Mireekh and al-Hilal.

Many wrestlers take a nom de combat with comedic overtones. Magirus, aka Adam Hamid, from Masalamiyya village near El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan, is named for a German truck. He claims 400 victories in an average match time of two minutes.

“I don’t have time to stick around,” he says with a shrug. He belongs to the national Greco-Roman team, and he has competed in the World Championships in Ankara, Turkey. “When in training I eat only fish and camel meat and drink only milk and fruit juice,” he explains. “But now, out of season for international matches, I eat as I please.”

An unrestricted diet does not seem to hurt his skills, for he battles to a draw with a fighter named Damar (Destruction), from South Kordofan. Damar seems pleased to have avoided Magirus’s pin, so he climbs the ring’s top rail and drinks the crowd’s adoration.

The day’s most anticipated match is between the nearly 2.1-meter-tall wrestler named Influenza, from Kadugli in the Nuba Mountains, and al-Tahir (the Virtuous One). Their match also ends in a draw, but then Influenza does what would be unthinkable in almost any other sport: He hefts his opponent high onto his shoulders and parades him around the ring as if al-Tahir had won. Perhaps that is how he felt after eking out a mere draw against an opponent a full third of a meter shorter.

The matches conclude by sundown, and minibuses take spectators back to their homes in Bahri, whose side-by-side mix of glistening villas, humble shacks, international-brand outlets and hole-in-the-wall stalls seem to free it of the sometimes-heavy historical legacies that underpin Omdurman and Khartoum, as different as those two are from each other.

If one takes a bird’s-eye view over this tripartite metropolis, seeking to generalize about where it has been and where it is going from the story of a single individual, one might wish to meet Sayyid Bashir Abu Jaib.

Abu Jaib’s roots are in the camel trade in central Sudan, but his life now is mostly in the city—a foot still there and a foot now here. He lives in one of Bahri’s new neighborhoods, keeps his trading office in old Omdurman and, to avoid traffic, he sometimes commutes there via Khartoum on bridges over first the Blue Nile and then the White.

His oldest child is a pharmacist newly graduated from university, his wife is an engineer, and the business associates who drop by in a constant stream are from his home territory. A cacophony of car horns bleeds through his office window as he discusses the prices of livestock, gum Arabic and karkady (a dried part of the hibiscus plant that makes a refreshing tea). Perhaps there is a margin he can act upon. Perhaps he is ready to broker a deal between the countryside and foreign markets. If so, the mosaic of Khartoum is the best place to make it happen.

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He wrote the first book in English by an author of Indian origin and opened London’s first Indian restaurant, but he is remembered most along England’s south coast for his therapeutic steam baths.
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Historian William Dalrymple titled his 1998 review of The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth-Century Journey through India, “An Indian with a Triple First.” It was an apt choice: The Travels was the first book ever published by an Indian writer in English, and the author was also the founder of London’s first Indian restaurant. To complete his hat trick, Mahomed—the spelling he used later in life—made a lasting name for himself in the English seaside resort of Brighton by bathing the royal, rich and famous.

Mahomed’s Travels would have remained confined to the rare-book sections of the few great libraries that hold an original copy if it were not for Michael H. Fisher, a professor of history at Oberlin College in Ohio. He persuaded the University of California Press and Oxford India Press to republish Mahomed’s memoir in 1996 complete with his own biographical sketch of Mahomed.

Last spring I spent a week in London and Brighton tracing the footsteps of Dean Mahomed, which is an Anglicized version of his given name, Din Muhammad. I sought out first Rozina Visram, whose 1986 book Ayahs, Lascars and Princes: The Story of Indians in Britain 1700–1947 discovered Sake Dean Mahomed for our contemporary era. We met at the British Library. My first question to her was why she had featured Mahomed in her book. Her answer: “I wanted to rescue him from obscurity.” She explained it was she who had inspired Fisher to republish Travels.

The next day I took a 57-minute train ride to Brighton. Within minutes of arrival, to my great surprise, I spotted, on the side of a number 822 city bus, the name “Sake Dean Mahomed.” (He adopted “Sake” as an Anglicization of shaykh in the 1820s.) I soon learned this bus sign was part of a civic campaign to honor notable citizens, and that there are today more traces of Mahomed in Brighton than one might expect. A formal portrait of Mahomed, attired as a Georgian gentleman, hangs in the Brighton Museum, painted by English artist Thomas Mann Baynes. Along the sea, the Queen’s Hotel stands on the site that was once Mahomed’s Baths. At 32 Grand Parade is the house where he died, aged 92.

Dean Mahomed was born in 1759 in Patna, today the capital of India’s eastern state of Bihar, about 600 kilometers from Kolkata. According to Mahomed’s autobiographical sketch, his father was a subedar, a military rank roughly equal to lieutenant, the second highest permitted to Indians under British colonial rule. He served in a battalion of sepoys (Indian and Bengali soldiers) in the Bengal Army of the East India Company. Mahomed was 11 when his father was killed in battle.

Some years later he took service under an Anglo-Irish officer named Captain Godfrey Baker and, like his father, rose through the ranks. In 1782 Captain Baker decided to return to Ireland, and he invited Mahomed to accompany him. “Convinced that I should suffer much uneasiness of mind, in the absence of my best friend,” Mahomed resigned his commission and left India—never to return. Twenty-five years old, Mahomed settled in 1784 in the small Irish port city of Cork, where he worked for the Baker family on their estate for the next 22 years.

He also went to school to master English, which he did successfully enough, because it was from Cork in 1794 that he published his historic two-volume Travels. His work, says Fisher, shows an “elegant command over the high English literary conventions of the day.” To market the book, Mahomed took out a series of newspaper advertisements, and he published Travels by subscription, as was common at the time. “Testifying to his acceptance as a literary figure,” says Fisher, “a total of 320 people entrusted him with a deposit … long in advance of the book’s delivery.”

In 1806, at age 47, Mahomed moved to London and married again. He headed for fashionable Portman Square, home and haunt to former East India Company employees referred to—pejoratively, at times—as nabobs, an Anglicization of the Mughal title nawab. He found employment with the richest nabob of them all, Sir Basil Cochrane, who had made a fortune in India on supply contracts with the British Navy. Cochrane had published several tracts promoting the use of “vapor” (steam) baths to relieve medical complaints, and he had even installed one at his home. Mahomed is believed to have added an Indian treatment of therapeutic massage to Cochrane’s vapor treatment, thus creating the salubrious formula that later was to become the sensation in Brighton.

In 1810, around the corner from Portman Square at 34 George Street, Mahomed opened London’s first Indian restaurant, called the Hindoostane Coffee House. TheEpicure’s Almanack—London’s first restaurant guide—described it as a place “for the Nobility and Gentry where they might enjoy the Hookhawith real Chilm tobacco and Indian dishes of the highest perfection.… All the dishes were dressed with curry powder, rice, cayenne and the best spices.” Despite the raves, Mahomed was unable make it a success. He declared bankruptcy two years later.

Today Portman Square is a mix of real-estate firms, hedge-fund offices and luxury apartments. Only the peaceful garden at its center seems to hold any memories of the days of the nabobs. Number 34 George Street has since been renumbered 102, and it is a tall block of serviced apartments for business travelers and tourists, a short walk from the shopper’s paradise of Oxford Street. At the entrance, the City of Westminster has affixed a green plaque: “Site of Hindoostane Coffee House 1810, London’s First Indian Restaurant. Owned By Sake Dean Mahomed 1759–1851.”

At the age of 55, Mahomed moved to Brighton. It was 1814, the year after the publication of Jane Austen’s most popular book, Pride and Prejudice, in which 15-year-old Lydia is consumed by a youthful infatuation with fast-growing, fashionable Brighton—sentiments that could offer a man like Mahomed an opportunity for a new start:

In Lydia’s imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised every possibility of human happiness. She saw, with the creative eye of fancy, the streets of that gay bathing-place.

Brighton’s fame as a health resort began in the 1750s with the dissertation by Richard Russell, M.D., asserting the curative benefits of seawater. There was, however, one problem: Most people couldn’t swim. This led to the development of a bathing apparatus: a small wooden room, fitted with carriage wheels, drawn into the sea by horse. After having disrobed the bather, a professional “dipper” would dunk the patient in the sea one or more times, depending on wave conditions, weather and the client’s fitness. Once the “cure” was complete, the client changed back into street clothes and the horse made the return ashore.

Mahomed offered a far more convenient, private and certainly less chilly “cure.” First came a kind of early form of aromatherapy: The client lay in a heated aromatic vapor or steam bath infused with Indian oils and herbs. After the client started perspiring freely, he or she was then placed inside a kind of flannel tent with sleeves protruding inwards that would allow the operator, from outside the tent, to massage the bather vigorously.

Mahomed described this process using the Hindi word chámpná, to knead or vigorously massage, eventually adopting an Anglicized version of it and billing himself as a “shampooing surgeon.” (Only later did “shampoo” come to mean hair-washing and hair soap.) It was around this time Mahomed added the title “Sake” to his name.

Former Royal Pavilion Director Clifford Musgrave wrote in his 1970 Life in Brighton:

The fashionable invalids were eager for some fresh way of whiling away their time, and the highly scented steam baths were found by many to be far more agreeable than sea-water baths, whether hot or cold, and to sufferers from rheumatism and kindred ailments the massage was soothing and relaxing. There was, moreover, the intriguing sensation that one was enjoying something of the voluptuous indulgences of the East.

In 1820 Mahomed’s opulent, bathhouse opened on the Brighton seafront. Visitors entered through a splendid vestibule where graphic testimonials were kept in the form of abandoned crutches, spine-stretchers, leg-irons, club-foot reformers and other paraphernalia from patients Mahomed had cured. The clientele amused themselves in reading rooms beautifully painted with Indian landscapes before moving to private marble baths. (Unseen by patients in the basement was the technology that pumped all seawater and freshwater the bathhouse required: a steam engine.)

Word spread, and quickly a visit to Mahomed’s Baths was de rigueur for English ladies and gentlemen as well as commoners plagued by gout, rheumatism and other maladies. Prominent figures such as Lord Castlereagh, Lord Canning, Lady Cornwallis and Sir Robert Peel frequented the establishment. So did the niece of the king of Poland, Princess Poniatowsky, who in gratitude presented Mahomed with an engraved silver cup that is now on display at the Brighton Museum. Mahomed became known simply as “Dr. Brighton.”

On my own first full day in Brighton, I went to see David Beevers, keeper of the Royal Pavilion. He explained that in another “amazing coincidence” the Royal Pavilion was being transformed by architect John Nash (designer of Buckingham Palace and much of Regency London) into a kind of Indian fantasia “just as Mahomed came to Brighton.” Nash’s client was none other than King George iv, who as prince regent had ruled for his father, George iii, during the latter’s terminal illness. “Shampooing surgeon” became a title of royal appointment. In 1825 Mahomed installed a private royal vapor bath next to the king’s bedroom in the Royal Pavilion, which Musgrave described as “a large marble plunge bath, with pulleys attached to the ceiling by means of which the Royal person could be lowered into the waters in a chair.”

Added Beevers:

When Mahomed came to the Royal Pavilion to “shampoo” the king, he wore an official costume modeled on Mughal imperial court dress now on display in the Royal Pavilion. But he would have put on something more practical whilst the massaging process took place.… Mahomed did much business with the royal household. Besides baths and shampoos, which cost one guinea each, he sold it bathing gowns of twilled calico and swanskin flannel, and other bathing gear.

Living Lineage

Sake Dean Mahomed married twice, each time, coincidentally, to a woman named Jane. In 1786, two years after his arrival in in Cork, Ireland, he married Jane Daly. In 1806 in London he married Jane Jefferys of Bath, England. While both bore children, there appears no trace of Daly’s line now, while Mahomed and Jefferys have more than 40 living descendants. Their grandson Frederick Akbar Mahomed (1849—1884) was an internationally recognized physician who graduated from Cambridge University and practiced at Guy’s Hospital, London, specializing in hypertension and kidney disease. The largest single group of descendants come from his great-great-grandson John Akbar Douglas Mahomed (1897—1952), who immigrated to the us, and many of them live in the state of Michigan. In an unpublished reconstruction of the Mahomed family history, J. Stewart Cameron, M.D., wrote:

I shared the honor of following, much later, in the footsteps of Frederick Akbar Mahomed as a consultant physician at Guy’s Hospital working in the same medical specialty, and so inevitably I studied Akbar’s outstanding work in this area. Through finding out about Akbar, I learned about his grandfather Sake Dean, and was instantly captivated.

The royal vapor bath was dismantled in 1850, said Beevers, which was “a great pity,” though there are hopes it might be restored because “Mahomed was a remarkable person, and there is increasing interest about him.”

After the death of King George IV in 1830, his younger brother succeeded to the throne as King William IV. The new king was as fond of Brighton—and shampooing—as his brother had been, and he kept Mahomed on as “shampooing surgeon.”

By the mid-1840s, when Charles Dickens was writing Dombey and Son, “shampooing” was sufficiently well-known to the reading public that he was able to write of his fictional character Miss Panky that she was “a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child—who was shampooed every morning, and seemed in danger of being rubbed away altogether.”

James Smith, a frequent contributor to London literary reviews at the time, composed a poetic tribute he called
“Ode to Mahomed, The Brighton Shampooing Surgeon”:

O thou dark sage, whose vapour bath

Makes muscular as his of Gath,

Limbs erst relax’d and limber:

Whose herbs, like those of Jason’s mate,

The wither’d leg of seventy-eight

Convert to stout knee timber:

The ode continued, attributing Brighton’s growth to Mahomed’s fame:

While thus beneath thy flannel shades,

Fat dowagers and wrinkled maids

Re-bloom in adolescence,

I marvel not that friends tell friends

And Brighton every day extends

Its circuses and crescents.

First published in The New London Magazine in 1822, these verses later appeared in Mahomed’s own self-promoting collection of testimonials. Originally titled Cases Cured by Sake Dean Mahomed, a second edition with the much longer title, Shampooing; or, Benefits Resulting from the Use of The Indian Medicated Bath, as Introduced into this Country, followed a few years later in 1826, with a third edition in 1838.

Of course, not everyone sang the praises of shampooing. Charles Molloy Westmacott, a British journalist and author who wrote humor and satire under the pseudonym Bernard Blackmantle and served as editor of The Age, the leading Sunday newspaper of the early 1830s, claimed that although shampooing “is in great repute [in Brighton],” it is “a sort of stewing alive by steam, sweetened by being forced through odoriferous herbs … dabbed all the while with pads of flannel.”

Mahomed shared his success, and he became a donor to local charities and the official steward for the Annual Charity Ball. He played a prominent role in the life of Brighton, illuminating the baths with gaslights to celebrate royal arrivals and anniversaries. “Mahomed was a generous and kind-hearted man,” says Visram, “always willing to help the poor and needy, either by giving them free treatment or by donations of money.”

Queen Victoria, after her accession to the throne in 1837, also made several visits to Brighton but, as Musgrave makes clear, quickly found the Pavilion not to her liking.

The lack of privacy at the Pavilion … made the place quite unsuitable for a couple who demanded the complete separation of their private family life from their State existence.… Writing to her aunt, the Duchess of Gloucester, from the Pavilion in February 1845, the Queen complained “the people are very indiscreet and troublesome here really, which makes this place quite a prison.” … Punch published an account entitled “The New Royal Hunt,” whichprotested fiercely against the fact … that “Her Majesty and her Royal Consort cannot walk abroad, like other people, without having a pack of ill-bred dogs at their heels, hunting them to the very gates of the Pavilion.”

As the pavilion lost its special standing as a royal residence, so Mahomed lost his royal patron.

Mahomed died in February 1851 at his son’s home, 32 Grand Parade, Brighton. According to Fisher, newspaper obituaries “uniformly took the tone that Dean Mahomed, once so important to the town’s development, had largely been forgotten.”

In his review, Dalrymple described Mahomed as “constantly charming and infinitely adaptable, intelligent and sharp-witted, part charlatan and part Renaissance man.” To which Visram added that “Mahomed may have been a self-publicist—and he had to be to succeed—but there is no doubt of his skill. The medical profession of the time was impressed.” In the end, Fisher asserted, “Mahomed negotiated for himself a distinguished place in British society.”

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As an airline pilot, I have visited many places. In few have I seen such an impressive city expansion as in Dubai, my home for more than 15 years. Historically a pearl-trading center, Dubai has reinvented itself in just a few decades—together with its six neighboring emirates—into one of the world’s busiest business, cultural and tourism centers.

During a walk on a Friday afternoon I came upon one of the weekend football matches that are popular along the sands of Jumeirah Beach. As the players seemed to mirror the skyline of Sheikh Zayed Road behind them, they made the city seem both big and small at the same time. I stopped to photograph the ebb and flow of the game as the light warmed toward sunset. At this particular moment, the players looked as if they had been arranged almost as deliberately as the buildings, and the sand reflected, for that instant, not the forms of the towers but the humanity that built them.

A few of the players looked up and waved to me; I replied with quick hellos. I didn’t learn where they were from, or where they work during the week. Like me, they could belong to any of the more than 200 nationalities that make this one of the world’s most diverse places. They turned back to the game; I walked on.

www.bjornmoerman.com
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For students: We hope this guide sharpens your reading skills and deepens your understanding.For teachers: We encourage reproduction and adaptation of these ideas, freely and without further permission from AramcoWorld, by teachers at any level.Common Core Standards met in this lesson: RL/RI.1 (see details below).—The Editors

How do you approach a place and people whose way of life differs from your own? What attitudes and behaviors do you cultivate? What do you look at if you really want to learn about the people and place? "Carsten Niebuhr and the Danish Expedition to Arabia" chronicles how one small group of 18th-century Europeans answered those questions. Niebuhr led a team on a seven-year journey to exploration to Arabia and Asia. In the article and through the activities, you will learn about Niebuhr's trip, ponder what your own community might look like to an outsider and be able to provide suggestions such an outsider examine in order to understand it. By the time you finish the activities, you will be able to:

Determine how to approach different cultures and people.

Identify the goals of Carsten Niebuhr's expedition.

Decide what a visitor to your community should look for in order to learn the most about it and its residents.

Assess the value of maps as sources of information about a place.

How Does One Approach Unfamiliar People and Places?

In "Carsten Niebuhr and the Danish Expedition to Arabia," writer Paul Chamberlain says that in the 1700s, when Niebuhr traveled, most Westerners approached "the Orient" judgmentally. What do you think he means by that? When people judge something, they usually apply their own values to others who may potentially hold different values. How do you think being judgmental affects people's understanding of others? Think of an example that supports your answer.

Carsten Niebuhr, however, was not typical of his era. Chamberlain asserts that Niebuhr, in his exploration, insisted on approaching people and places on their own terms. Find evidence in the article to support this assertion. In a class discussion, share the examples you have found. Then answer this question: What do you think led Niebuhr to approach his travels the way he did?

Turn your attention from Niebuhr's attitude to the kinds of information he sought on his trip. There were five goals. Have a volunteer write them on the board or on chart paper. Ask, and answer in a class discussion, why each item was on the list. What was it about diseases and remedies, for example, that was so valuable in the 1760s that explorers would specifically seek out information on the subject?

Now bring this closer to home. Imagine a stranger is visiting your community. Consider each of Niebuhr's five goals, one at a time. Discuss whether or not you would recommend that your visitor have that goal. What value, if any, would there be in exploring the local geography, for example? What could be gained? If, as a class, you don't think a goal would be useful today in your area, explain why you think it wouldn't.

Once you have evaluated the usefulness of Niebuhr's goals in your area, work in a small group to decide what goals you would set for your visitor. For example, would you suggest books to be collected? Or perhaps shows on Netflix or Hulu to be watched, or media posts from locals to be followed? Come up with a list of five or six goals. Write them down, along with a sentence for each, explaining why you think it is important enough to be included on your list. Have groups share their lists and explanations, noting which goals, if any, you have in common. Consider your own list again and revise it if you've learned something from your classmates that you want to include Assign one goal to each small group. Have each group explore and report on what they learn about your community that fits the goal. As a class, evaluate which goals were most useful.

Why Maps?

Niebuhr was a cartographer—someone who makes maps. The article notes that he made maps of every place he visited, maps of both natural features, like coastlines; and human-made features, like Aleppo. Why do you think a cartographer's involvement be essential? What could maps provide? Why would it have been important to get maps of previously unknown places? To answer the question, think about if or when you use maps (and this can include directions you get on a smart phone). Why do you need the maps? Could you function just as well without them? If not, what do you get from a map that you can't get another way? If you were Denmark's King Frederick V, would you have included a cartographer on the trip? Why or why not?

Bonus Map Activity

When you use an online map for directions, or when you look at a map of a city or country, you are getting the view from above. The map shows how a place is organized, as if you were in a airplane looking down at the layout. In the 1760s you might have been able to climb a hill or mountain to get such a view, but that wasn't always possible. How do you think someone makes a map whey they can't get that overview? Try it and see. Choose a neighborhood you don't know well. Walk through it, making a map of the street layout as you go. When you're done, compare the map to an online map of the neighborhood. How close to accurate was your map?

Common Core Standards met in this lesson:

RL/RI.1Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

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For students: We hope this guide sharpens your reading skills and deepens your understanding.For teachers: We encourage reproduction and adaptation of these ideas, freely and without further permission from AramcoWorld, by teachers at any level.Common Core Standards met in this lesson: RI.9-10.2, W9-10.1 (see details below).—The Editors

Most people want to protect endangered species. At least in theory they do. In actuality, it's not always so clear. That's because sometimes protecting species and the natural environment requires sacrificing other activities—activities that may be part of how people make a living. Put in another way, the need for economic stability sometimes conflicts with the need to protect the vulnerable. In this lesson, you will analyze this conflict by focusing on a specific study: efforts across Asia to protect the endangered snow leopard. By the time you finish these activities, you will be able to:

Explain why people from so many nations value snow leopards and want to protect them.

Identify the social political and economic forces that contribute to endangering snow leopards.

Present solutions to problems that have hindered conservation efforts.

Evaluate your solutions.

Start Here: An Overview

Read "Asian Nations Unite to Protect Snow Leopards." To help you see how the article is organized, find each of the following sections in the article and mark where it begins and ends:

The cultural meanings of snow leopards

How Information about snow leopards is gathered

The social, political and economic forces that have contributed to making snow leopards an endangered species

How conservationists are addressing the problems.

With the overall structure of the article clear, and key topics identified, you're ready to begin.

Why Work Together? Why Snow Leopards?

First off, let's take notes that the efforts to protect the snow leopard have drawn together people and organizations from 12 different countries. It's amazing, really, if you think about tit. It's hard enough to get individuals to agree about anything. Its's downright astounding to get people from across a continent to agree about the need to protect the snow leopard and to work together to save it. What is it about snow leopards that has united these diverse people? To answer the question, look in particular at two sections of the article—the one that talks about the cultural meanings of the snow leopard, and the one that provides evidence that the snow leopard is endangered. Imagine you are one of the people attending the Second International Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Forum. Write a short statement—a few sentences—explaining why you are there. What is it about the cause that is important enough to get you to come to this meeting? Have a few volunteers share their statements.

Conservation vs Economic Stability

It may sound abstract to say that conservation seems to conflict with economic development, especially if you're a school-aged student who may not be familiar with the difficulties of making a living. To help you think about why so many people worry about conservation taking a toll on economic prosperity, try this: Divide the class into small groups of three or four. Assign each group one of the following:

1. Imagine you are Mahabat Isalieva, the woman who raises sheep, goats and yaks in Tajikistan. Imagine that a snow leopard killed some of your cattle, enough that for a month you had no income, which means you had no way to feed your family. The walls around your land protect your livestock from other wild animals, but not from snow leopards. Discuss with your group what you would do. What actions would you take to protect the well-being of your family? then think about the other possible solutions to the problem. What would you need in order to agree not to harm a snow leopard? How might you get what you need?
2. Alternatively, take the role of a worker whose job is to protect snow leopards. You earn about $60 per month, but the snow leopards you assigned to safeguard are worth much more. One dead snow leopard, killed by a poacher, could bring in $10,000. If the poacher gave you even just a portion of that money—enough to get you to look the other way and not turn him in for breaking the law—your family would be much more secure than it is now. You wouldn't have to worry so much about whether they would have enough to eat or a place to live. What could you do to ensure both your well-being—including your honesty—and that of the snow leopard? Come up with ideas, identifying what would need to happen in order for those ideas to become actions.

With your group, develop a presentation that shows the problem you face and various solutions you can envision. Make a graphic organizer to show visually what you need in order to secure the well-being of both your family and the snow leopard. You can also draw on the ideas for solutions presented in the article. Make your presentations to the class, with a scribe keeping track of the solutions each team offers. As a class, discuss which solutions seem the most promising, why and what would need to be in place for the people involved to implement the solutions.

Culminating Activity

Now that you've had a chance to explore the tensions between economic stability and conservation, write a statement advocating for protecting the snow leopard with a plan that also protects the security of the people who live in the 12 Asian countries where the snow leopard lives. Make sure your statement includes the problems for snow leopards and for people, and your idea(s) for solving those problems in a way that benefits everyone involved.

Common Core Standards met in this lesson:

RI9-10.2Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

W9-10.1Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

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Of six men who set out from Denmark in 1761, disease took five; only Carsten Niebuhr—mapmaker and empathic observer—returned, and he published what became a foundation of European scientific knowledge of Arabia.
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To understand how a boy born to a German farm family in 1733 came to be part of one of his century’s most ambitious and consequential scientific expeditions, we need to look at history. Niebuhr grew up on the threshold of the Age of Enlightenment, that period of growth in Western intellectual development that did so much to shape Europe’s understandings of the rest of the world—including the lands, peoples and cultures to its east, “the Orient.” Unlike many in the West who viewed the Orient judgmentally, Niebuhr adopted a more empathic attitude toward people and places he encountered over nearly six years of travels. As he wrote in his diary, “[c]ultures are not good or bad—they are just different.”

If it had not been for the king of Denmark, however, the expedition to Arabia might have never occurred. Like other learned Europeans of his time, King Frederick v was painfully aware of how little was actually known about the East: Other than the Bible and a few tales of European travelers, the Arabian Peninsula was still almost entirely a terra incognita. The king proposed to change that. Enthralled by the intellectual achievements of Prussia’s Frederick the Great, Frederick v eagerly responded to an expeditionary proposal put to him by Johann David Michaelis, distinguished theologian and orientialist of the University of Göttingen in central Germany.

Michaelis outlined five goals that won the king’s favor. First, the expedition was to explore the geography of Arabia; second, it would record the plants and animals en route; third, it was to describe the habits, customs and architecture of the people; fourth, it would seek to learn about diseases and remediespeculiar to the region; and finally, it was to collect as many antique books and manuscripts as possible.

Michaelis also posed a list of specific questions. He wanted to know, for example, if tides could have parted the Red Sea; whether a land bridge had once linked the Horn of Africa with Arabia; and if stars really shone more brightly in Europe than in the tropics. The project was truly scientific in scope, and in keeping with the spirit of the Age, the king requested that the expedition be conducted with “an open-mindedness towards everything that was new, along with a respect for other ways of seeing.”

Selecting candidates for this project was no easy task. Michaelis eventually chose six men for the expedition. The linguistic expert was Friedrich Christian von Haven of Denmark; the biologist was Peter Forsskål of Sweden, a student of Carl Linnaeus, “the father of taxonomy”; the artist was George Wilhelm Baurenfeind, a German; the physician was Christian Carl Kramer of Denmark; LarsBerggren, also from Sweden, was the servant; as cartographer and—most importantly—treasurer, he named Carsten Niebuhr, a military surveyor who held the rank of lieutenant.

For the first stage of their journey to Constantinople, the expedition was given the man-o’-war Greenland, which departed Copenhagen on January 4, 1761, with all aboard but von Haven, who was still in Europe and had arranged to embark in Marseilles. It took four attempts for the ship to break out of the harbor’s ice into the North Sea. To compound their early difficulties, the explorers had set off in the middle of the Seven Years’ War, and England’s Royal Navy waylaid the ship in the Mediterranean in search of contraband. While on board, Niebuhr was stricken by dysentery.

Seven months later the expedition debarked on the northeastern Aegean island of Tenedos. From there, the members took a small Turkish boat to the mainland and on July 30 entered Constantinople. In the Ottoman capital they were greeted by turbans, veils and the shady balconies of the East. There they began their work, collecting specimens and purchasing books and manuscripts in the backstreets of the city. Most importantly, they received permission from the Ottoman authorities to continue their voyage toward Arabia. A few weeks later they sailed south for Alexandria.

According to Niebuhr’s diary entries, the expedition spent a year in Egypt.

After a brief stay on the Mediterranean coast they traveled inland to Cairo, where they found comfortable lodgings in the French Quarter. Niebuhr’s son Barthold Georg, a diplomat and historian who wrote an appendix to Michaelis’s memoirs, explained that although not having traveled “any higher up than Cairo,” the crew immediately set about collecting scientific evidence. Biologist Forsskål recorded some 120 species of plants. He also studied the caravans unloading their wares in the busy markets: cotton, silk, pearls, emeralds and diamonds came from Makkah; and dyes, ivory, parrots, ostrich feathers and slaves, he noted, came in from Sudan.

Niebuhr mapped Cairo and explored its elaborate irrigation system. In addition, he studied clothing, customs, musical instruments and games, noting in his diary that “[i]f the Mahometans [sic] show any degree of passion for any one game, it is for chess, at which they spend, sometimes, whole days without interruption.” The Pyramids particularly fascinated Niebuhr. There, he not only used his surveyor’s octant to calculate the height of the Great Pyramid with great accuracy, he also recorded the hieroglyphs, particularly those glyphs that appeared repeatedly, hoping “[t]his fact may be of some use in helping to [understand] the meaning which they were intended to convey.” He also mapped dozens of villages along the Nile Delta.

Proving his mettle as a resourceful individual with an appetite for hard work, the young German surveyor’s qualities would soon be put to harder tests.

The following year the expedition made its way east to Suez, where its real desert journey began. Now attired in Arab clothing, and outfitted with tents, beds, pots, flour, rice biscuits, butter, coffee beans and their array of scientific instruments, the team arrived at the small town on August 31, 1762. While Forsskål remained in Suez with his companions to study Red Sea tides, marine life and boatbuilding techniques, von Haven journeyed south to the Sinai Peninsula’s mountains, in particular to Jebel el-Mokateb (“Mountain of Inscriptions”), to examine its epigraphy. The artist Baurenfeind was to accompany him, but he had fallen ill, so Niebuhr had to go in his place.

Niebuhr was not happy. Part of the problem was that von Haven, the eminent Danish philologist, was condescending not only to Niebuhr—the low-born farm boy—but also to everyone else on the expedition. His ill treatment of the group’s Arab guides made matters even worse. Niebuhr, by contrast, proved more accommodating toward his colleagues, and he quickly learned how to interact as an equal with the Arabs, confessing, “I fought to gain the confidence and friendship of one of the [guides], by making him some presents, and causing him to ride sometimes behind me on my camel. From him I received honest and distinct answers.”

After traveling through the desert for five days, von Haven and Niebuhr reached Jebel el-Mokateb, known today as Serabit el-Khadim (“Heights of the Servant”), crowned with a small temple dedicated to the goddess Hathor. Long ago, Egyptians had smelted copper and mined turquoise there, but the primary task of the Danish expedition was to determine if there were any inscriptions in Hebrew that might link the mountain to Moses. But all they found were inscrutable hieroglyphs. Von Haven showed little interest and left Niebuhr to copy them.

The pair spent the next few days on Jebel Musa (Mount Sinai; literally “Mount Moses”). At its foot lay St. Catherine’s Monastery, whose library von Haven looked forward to examining. The monks, however, refused to recognize his letter of introduction from Constantinople. The vast collection of ancient manuscripts, including the Codex Sinaiticus (one of the oldest Bibles in the world), could not be studied. It was a devastating humiliation for von Haven, but Niebuhr once again set to work: He sketched the monastery, scaled the mountain and diligently copied its inscriptions. On his return journey to Suez, Niebuhr even recorded a mirage, noting in his diary “how greatly objects are magnified, when seen through mist.”

On September 25, 1762, they rejoined the rest of the group in Suez. It must have been a relief for Niebuhr. They sent home Forsskål’s specimens, Baurenfeind’s drawings and Niebuhr’s maps, and then purchased berths on a ship sailing down the Red Sea coast and across the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba to Jiddah, a three-week journey. A few days into the voyage a curious event occurred: The expedition predicted an eclipse. Arabs who witnessed this, many of them pilgrims on their way to Makkah, were so impressed that they begged the scientists to also cure their chronic ailments, believing that the foreigners possessed magic powers. The expedition spent six weeks in Jiddah. Niebuhr mapped the town, and Forsskål set to work collecting seeds. But there was little to interest von Haven, who was exhibiting signs of a serious illness.

On December 29, 1762, the crew disembarked at the Yemeni port of al- Luhayyah. The Danish explorers had finally reached the country that was, to them, a mystery, and which they hoped would be the highlight of their journey—Arabia Felix. Initial impressions were indeed felicitous: the governor generously offered to pay for their journey from Jiddah; Berggren cured the amir’s horse; and, while Niebuhr mapped the town, Forsskål collected hundreds of botanical specimens and recorded details of the country’s history, trade, currency and legal system.

In the months that followed, the expedition traveled throughout western Yemen. On February 25, 1763, they arrived in Bayt al-Faqih, four days from al-Luhayyah; there the expedition set up base, and each member carried out his own explorations. In the months that followed, Niebuhr trekked solo to the nearby coastal villages of Chalefca, al-Hudayah, Zabid and Kahme. In late March, Forrskål accompanied Niebuhr on a trip to Ta’iz, via Djobla.

Upon their return, Niebuhr once again became feverish, and von Haven’s condition grew serious. The expedition together decided to move south along the coast to Mokha before heading inland toward the capital, Sana’a. It proved to be a challenging journey. The coast was hot and humid, and as the men moved deeper inland, they encountered scorching heat. Along the way, the monsoon arrived, and to escape the torrential rains they slept on the mud floors of coffee huts.

It was too much for von Haven. Although Michaelis considered him a “diligent pupil,” he was, as Barthold (Niebuhr’s son) later described him, “lazy by nature” and prone to despair and revolts that weakened him physically. “It seemed to me,” wrote Michaelis, “that his physical constitution would not sustain the fatigues and hardships of such a journey.” The linguist succumbed to his fever in Mokha on May 25, 1763. A few weeks later, en route to Sana’a, Forsskål suffered a similar fate in Jerim. Barthold attributed Forsskål’s demise to “a bilious disorder … partly augmented by his capriciousness.” Niebuhr, convinced the biologist was stricken with a bout of dysentery, was shaken by his death, and he described Forsskål as a brilliant scientist, extolling his fluency in Arabic: “We all greatly mourned Herr Forsskål.… He devoted himself with tremendous industry to our expedition, the successful pursuance of which lay very close to his heart.” Despair began to overcome Niebuhr. “This is the only period in all his travels,” wrote his son, “when he gave way to melancholy and sunk under it.”

Now reduced to four—Niebuhr, Kramer, Baurenfeind and Berggren—the expedition continued to push deeper into the Yemeni interior. As they reached the mountains, they found relief from the heat, and when they at last rode into Sana’a on July 16, 1763, they were surprised to discover running water and shady streets—it was paradise. They secured a comfortable residence in one of the town’s picturesque buildings and were given a private audience with His Royal Highness the Imam, who sat on cushions beneath an arched roof, surrounded by fountains. He was astonished when the expedition displayed its scientific equipment, which included Niebuhr’s prized octant, a compass, a magnifying glass and a thermometer. Niebuhr wasted no time in mapping the town, and he carefully recorded details of its trade with Turkey, Persia and India.

Their sojourn in Sana’a, however, was brief. A nagging fear of disease prompted them to depart back to Mokha, where they planned on sailing to the Danish mission in Bombay (now Mumbai)—their travels in Arabia at last complete. Unfortunately, their timing was poor. As summer temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius, the journey across Tihamah (a coastal area of the Red Sea so named for its heat), was a brutal one. By the time they boarded an English ship for India on August 21, 1763, the only man left who could stand was Niebuhr.

On the voyage to Bombay, Niebuhr gradually recovered strength. He continued to take sightings with his octant, and he pondered several of the questions posed by Michaelis in his original instructions to the expedition. While on board he also spent time putting the finishing touches to his maps of Yemen, which proved to be so accurate that a century later the English explorer Gifford Palgrave dedicated his book to Niebuhr, praising the German surveyor as “one who first opened up Arabia for Europe.”

Unfortunately, his companions only grew weaker. Barthold described how all were “attacked by fever of this climate”—malaria. Baurenfeind, the German artist, died eight days into the voyage. Berggren, the Swedish servant, passed away the next day. Both were buried at sea. In his diary, Niebuhr recalled the irony that Arabia Felix meant “Happy Arabia,” but not for his expedition. “Our diseases were our own fault,” Niebuhr reflected, and “[w]hile my companions yet lived, I was myself several times very ill because like them I chose to live in the European manner.” This prompted Niebuhr to make changes.

Niebuhr arrived in Bombay with physician Kramer on September 11. Though still suffering from his own illness, Kramer had exhorted Niebuhr to adhere to what Barthold described as a “strict regimen of only bread, rice and tea,” abstaining from meat and other heavy foods. Niebuhr’s self-discipline and subsequent return to full strength astonished the doctor, who spent his last days in Bombay, before passing away soon after his arrival.

Yet Niebuhr was not entirely alone. For the first time since leaving Cairo he found himself in the company of Europeans. Niebuhr took off his Arab attire and learned the English language. He befriended English officers, benefited from their hospitality and gained access to their “engraved charts of the Indian seas … roads and harbours, of the south-eastern coast of Arabia.” Characteristically, the surveyor also set to work mapping Bombay for the Danish crown and studying its history and trade. He commented in his diary on its alphabet, as well as the calendar, the caste system and the Parsees, demonstrating once again the breadth of his interests and the keenness of his observational skills.

A year later, after witnessing the colorful festivities 250 kilometers north at Surat, including its enormous elephants, he left Bombay for Oman. He was accompanied by another Danish servant whom he had chanced upon in the city.

Watching the porpoises darting across the azure waters of the Arabian Sea along the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, Niebuhr must have pondered the wisdom of continuing his journey alone, but his loyalty to the Danish crown and the completion of the expedition was never in jeopardy. Feeling much better after experimenting with his diet of rice, water and fruit, Niebuhr eagerly mapped Muscat, Oman’s capital, and documented the pearling activities in Bahrain along the peninsula’s western coast, before disembarking in Persia on February 4, 1765.

The ruins of Persepolis, Persia’s ancient summer capital, were in some ways the highlight of Niebuhr’s journey. Although alone, he felt both physically fit and safe. The cooler temperatures were a welcome relief, and his only complaint was that his European clothing was uncomfortable. He spent 24 days in the ruins of the Achaemenid city, mapping the site, sketching stone figures and copying its inscriptions. Some people there even asked him to write on paper, believing it would protect them from illness if they would press the words against their body. Ironically, copying the cuneiform tablets in the harsh sunlight damaged Niebuhr’s eyes, and he had to rest. But the inscriptions he sent back to Denmark were priceless. Within a few years European scholars had deciphered most of the Babylonian, Elamite and Old Persian scripts. A child of the early Enlightenment, his work proved to be an important catalyst.

Niebuhr’s journey was still not over, however. Several weeks after leaving Persepolis, a brief reference to his whereabouts surfaced in Europe in the French Gazette d’Utrecht, which reported that the “Danish [sic] scholar … who plans to travel on to Baghdad … and Aleppo … is [now] the only survivor [of the Danish expedition].” But from this moment on Niebuhr decided to travel incognito. “He lived and talked and ate as if he were an Arab among Arabs … [and] avoided everything that might draw attention to his presence,” wrote Thorkild Hansen in his 1962 biographical novel, Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition 1761–1767. Niebuhr once again adopted Arab attire, and he ate a diet of rice, sun-dried meat, prunes, apricots, coffee beans and water laced with brandy (to purify it). He replaced his Danish servant with a Muslim guide. He even changed his name to Abdullah, believing that “the true observer is always a person who has lost his own identity.”

Niebuhr sailed up the Tigris on a riverboat, stopping at Basra and staying in Baghdad before setting off for Aleppo via Mosul. He was particularly impressed with Baghdad, admiring its libraries, observatories and splendid quays. Farther upstream he approached the ruins of Nineveh, the ancient capital of the Assyrians, and he encountered the Yazidis, a religious sect that worshiped the Peacock Angel. Niebuhr diligently mapped the small towns and villages all along the river, and he continued to record vivid experiences in his diary. On June 6, 1766, after visiting the Crusader city of Urfa, Niebuhr rode—triumphantly—into Aleppo.

He spent the next two weeks in Syria. After changing back into European attire, Niebuhr devoted most of his time to investigating the Druze. On June 24, 1766, he decided to leave for Antioch (now Antakya, Turkey), 100 kilometers west. He went via Cyprus, where he examined rock inscriptions Michaelis suspected to be of Phoenician origin but that proved to be Armenian. Niebuhr then sailed back to the Levant where he stopped briefly in Jerusalem to map the city and make a sketch from the Mount of Olives. After a short detour to Bethlehem, Niebuhr set off for Damascus. From there he traveled north along the coast via Sidon to Latakia before returning to Aleppo. Finally, on November 20, 1766, he began his long journey home.

The ride across Anatolia proved a harrowing ordeal with heavy snow, which caused his camel to slip on the icy mountain roads. It took the caravan four months to reach Constantinople. After a few weeks of rest, he continued into Europe through plague-ridden Bucharest, and then he made his way across Central Europe through Warsaw, Breslau and Hanover. It was not until November 20, 1767, that he rode into Copenhagen.

At first, his solo arrival on horseback was not cause for celebration: The city had almost completely forgotten about the expedition to Arabia. In the days that followed, however, Lieutenant Niebuhr was invited to the Royal Court and promoted to captain. Over the next few years he compiled an exhaustive account of the expedition’s work and then, to everybody’s surprise, Niebuhr married and took a post as clerk in Dithmarschen, a remote little district less than 60 kilometers from where he was born, along the shore of the North Sea at the mouth of the Elbe in today’s northern Germany.

Nevertheless, his achievements were gradually recognized more widely. In 1801 the farm boy—who had never even mastered High German—was honored in Paris as a corresponding Fellow of the French Academy. Although he continued to enjoy good health, his “curious cold” never fully disappeared, and toward the end of his life Niebuhr’s eyesight began to fail. He died a few days before the Battle of Waterloo, aged 82, on April 26, 1815. On that day, the sole survivor of Europe’s first truly scientific expedition to the Arabian Peninsula, the man who had conducted himself with “an open-mindedness towards everything that was new, along with a respect for other ways of seeing,” took his well-deserved place in history.

Among the visitors to his stall was a middle-aged German photography enthusiast who introduced himself as Norman. He would come by to talk about their shared passion for photography, says Ayari.

“Norman was surprised I could take so many pictures with such a small camera,” Ayari explains. Then one day about 10 years ago, Norman showed up with a present: a Nikon D80 camera. Ayari recalls the moment as one of great surprise, happiness and a sense of profound luck: He could now take his hobby toward a professional level.

He taught himself to use the camera by experimenting with every setting and button. Each day he brought it to the market, wrapped in a cloth for want of a camera case. He carried it with him everywhere. “I was crazy for taking pictures,” he says.

He worked seven days a week, and although this afforded few opportunities to explore beyond the market, the city came to him. In the market, he says, he could find the heart of Tunis in the faces of pensioners, professors and bankers; singers, seamstresses and mechanics; cooks, homemakers and children on errands. He captured them all.

As word spread, people began coming to the market not for produce at all, but for a portrait. Younger photographers began to hang around, too, and they would pepper him with questions. He always made the portraits requested, and he answered every question.

Two years later Norman was back. “He asked if he could use the camera for a few days,” Ayari recalls. “When he returned, he said he was impressed with how well I had taken care of it and how much I had used it.” Norman, it turned out, had brought another gift. This time it was Nikon’s professional D700 camera with a pair of high-quality lenses. “It was another joy and a surprise,” Ayari says, deeply aware of his continuing fortune. “I know a lot of photographers, and no one gives you a gift like that.” As with his other cameras, he keeps it under the counter of his stall, and every day he uses it to make photos of people.

In 2013 a Tunisian television channel ran a 20-minute feature on Ayari. This brought people to the market even from beyond Tunis, just to have a portrait made by “al-mosawer baye’ al-limoun.” At the end of that year, he held an exhibition—fittingly in the Marché Central itself.

In his portraits, people are noticeably relaxed. Although some know Ayari from years in the market, many do not, and as a Marché Central professional, Ayari has cultivated a breezy confidence with strangers. They trust him and follow his posing directions, and it all shows in the images. Since the 2011 Tunisian Revolution, Ayari has kept a flag in his stall, often draping it around the shoulders of kids. “It was a way to show pride in being Tunisian,” he says.

In the 1995 movie Smoke, a character named Auggie Wren, played by actor Harvey Keitel, works in a Brooklyn tobacco shop and each day takes photos from the same spot. Not “just some guy who pushes coins across the counter,” says Wren, photography is “my project—what you’d call my life’s work.” In the film, Wren points to 4,000 photos stuck into 14 albums.

Unlike the fictional Auggie Wren, Ayari does not shut away his prints in albums. Before he received his first Nikon, he had begun printing the portraits using money earned by selling mint and giving them to the people he photographed, often during the three days of ‘Id al-Fitr that mark the end of Ramadan. “At least 500 a year,” he says. He adds that when he was young, receiving a photo of himself gave him a warm and contented feeling. Now giving them to others is a similar pleasure.

Perhaps also it is a subconscious way of passing on Norman’s generosity. Ayari never even learned Norman’s surname, he says. He has not seen him for several years.

On a Saturday morning in October, Ayari was in his usual place, bantering with familiar faces, weighing lemons, selling brilliant green mint by the handful and dropping Tunisian dinar coins into a wooden box of change.

A couple approached, their 10-year-old daughter somewhat reluctantly in tow. Ayari smiled and spoke a few words to her, and the girl’s apprehension seemed to evaporate. He moved some lemons aside to make a space on the mound for her to sit. He then lifted her up, smoothed out her white dress, adjusted her pink feather hairband and gave her some directions on turning before clicking off a couple of frames.

After he showed the girl and her parents the results on the camera’s back screen, he slipped the camera back under the counter. They would have their pictures soon enough, he assured them, as a lemon-buying customer was waiting. He started to gather up her order.

Ayari’s aspiration, he says, is to help promote awareness of photography as art in Tunisia. “I want to spread it around the country. This is my dream,” he says.

And it is a dream he will pursue from his produce stand in a corner of the Marché Central. “I love the market,” he says. “And it is my source of livelihood.”

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The eighth most-studied language in US schools and universities today is Arabic. That would please Edward E. Salisbury of Yale, who in 1841 became the country’s first full professor of Semitic languages—nearly 200 years after North America’s first Arabic class was offered at Harvard.
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She knew that in 1841, Yale had appointed the pioneering scholar Edward E. Salisbury as Professor of Arabic and Sanskrit Languages and Literature, the first such full-time appointment in the us. Inspired by the Leiden celebration, Dougherty dug into the Yale archives and began to plan for the 175th anniversary of his appointment.

In September 2016, an exhibition and six-month-long series of lectures reinvigorated the dusty legacy of one of the leading American Orientalists of his time. It also opened a window onto the history of Arabic in colonial and early America that predates Salisbury by almost 200 years.

The Christian Reformation in Europe in the 16th century stimulated scholarship of the Bible, including the study of ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Chaldaic, Syriac and Arabic, all to better understand original texts. Harvard was the first to introduce this theologically driven study of Semitic languages in 1640, and it added Arabic while Charles Chauncy served as the university’s president between 1654 and 1672. Yale introduced Arabic in 1700; Columbia University in 1784; and the University of Pennsylvania in 1788.

“The earliest colleges founded in the us were intended to produce an educated ministry who were supposed to be able to read the Bible, and preferably early translations in Aramaic,” explains Benjamin R. Foster, Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale.

“However, the practicality of life in colonial America was such that very few students were actually interested,” he adds.

Ezra Stiles, an ordained minister who studied Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, encountered this reluctance after he became president of Yale amid the American Revolution in 1778. “I have obliged all the freshmen to study Hebrew,” wrote Stiles in 1790. “This has proved very disagreeable to a number of the students.”

Semitic studies were a specialization at the graduate level in Europe and later spread through the us, explains Roger Allen, Emeritus Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Graduate studies in America, he notes, were influenced by the rigors of German scholarship and based on the German model, led in large part by the immigration of German scholars to the newly formed United States. Almost all the dictionaries and teaching anthologies at that time had been translated from the original Sumerian, Arcadian, Aramaic and Arabic into German. The old adage, jokes Allen, was that “the most important Semitic language then was German!”

Among these German scholars of Semitic languages was Johann Christoph Kunze, whose courses in Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic and Arabic at Columbia University, beginning in 1784, failed to attract any students. Nevertheless, Arabic was introduced both at Dartmouth College and Andover Theological Seminary in 1807, Princeton Theological Seminary in 1822, New York University in 1833 and, in 1841, Yale not only offered courses but also made its historic appointment of Salisbury as the country’s first full professor in the field.

Unfortunately, to his lasting dismay, Yale students showed little more enthusiasm for Salisbury’s offerings than Columbia’s had for Kunze’s. He had only two graduate students prior to his resignation in 1856.

Twenty-seven years later, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Paul Haupt, a German Assyriologist from the University of Göettingen, found more success than either of them. In 1883, Haupt’s program in comparative Semitic philology became the model for other American universities at the time when interest in Arabic was shifting from a basis in theology to the language itself, “in order to learn about premodern history, culture, religion and society,” says Allen.

The Unexpected Pioneer

Like most educated men of his time, Edward Elbridge Salisbury was expected to lead a minister’s scholarly and mostly contemplative life. Born into a wealthy Boston family in 1814, he graduated from Yale in 1832 and passed his ministry exam in 1836. That same year Salisbury and his bride Abigail Salisbury Phillips embarked on a three-year tour of Europe that steered him away from the ministry and launched his reputation as an American pioneer in Arabic-language studies.

Intellectually curious and amply funded, Salisbury met with prominent Sanskrit- and Arabic-language scholars in Europe. In Berlin, he studied Sanskrit, and in Paris, he began to learn Arabic from Europe’s leading Arabist, A. I. Silvestre De Sacy.

In 1839 the Salisburys returned to New Haven, Connecticut, with a large collection of Arabic and Sanskrit manuscripts and books, many acquired from the auction of De Sacy’s library after his sudden death in 1838. At that time, there were no research libraries in America with collections of orientalist books, periodicals or manuscripts. Salisbury’s acquisitions attracted scholars and inspired the establishment of his professorship of Arabic and Sanskrit at Yale in 1841.

Despite his inability to attract more than two graduate students to his courses, Salisbury’s legacy is greater than he could have envisioned. His essays on Arabic and Islam were the first scholarly publications of their kind in the us. When he donated his library of rare books and manuscripts in Arabic, Sanskrit and Persian to Yale in 1870, it was recognized as the largest such collection in the country, and today it remains a valuable resource.

“Usefulness to him was not producing more scholars,” asserts Benjamin Foster, Yale’s Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature, “but doing something to make the world a better place.”

By the mid-19th to the early 20th century, more universities and theological seminaries began to offer Arabic. In 1900 Yale Professor Charles Cutler Torrey picked up where Salisbury left off, reinvigorating interest in Arabic-language studies and founding the first American center for Oriental research in Jerusalem, which continues to this day. At the same time, the growth in archeology triggered further interest in learning not just written Arabic, but spoken Arabic as well, including dialects. By 1937, 10 universities in the us offered Arabic, although only at the graduate level.

The aftermath of World War ii precipitated a new and urgent shift as the emergence of the us as one of two superpowers called for new international skills. “It was abundantly evident that America was falling very short on any kind of expertise about what was actually going on post-Ottoman Empire,” says Allen.

The us government enlisted renowned linguists to prepare textbooks and to create language training for military personnel. In 1947 classes in Modern Standard Arabic (literary Arabic) and dialects began at the Foreign Service Institute School of Languages in Washington, D.C., as well as at the Army Language School in Monterey, California. By the early 1950s, other government agencies such as the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency had established Arabic programs.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, in 1957, the Soviet educational system’s emphasis on science, mathematics and foreign languages was seen as the leading factor in its edge in space technology. In response, the 1958 National Defense Education Act (ndea) supported the study of these subjects in schools, and it identified five languages for priority funding: Russian, Chinese, Hindustani, Portuguese and Arabic. Title vi of the ndea supported new fellowships, instructional materials, summer programs, teacher-training workshops, research and more—many of which continue, in various forms, today.

From the private sector, a 1957 Ford Foundation grant of $176,500 funded an inter-university summer program in Near Eastern languages shared among Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Michigan and Princeton, with each university teaching Arabic on a rotating basis in the summers from 1957-1961. Extension of the grant from 1962 to 1968 added the University of California at Los Angeles, Georgetown University and the University of Texas at Austin. These grants not only helped to establish the increasingly widespread model of intensive Arabic-language summer programs (see sidebar below) but also generated new teaching methods.

The Summer Academy

For five weeks each summer since 2007, letters from the Arabic alphabet have decorated old metal lockers in Charlestown High School’s aging five-story brick building in Boston, Massachusetts. The sounds of students practicing Arabic words and phrases float into the hallways, while other classes learn about Arabic calligraphy or dance from visiting artists.

Founded in 2007 by Steven Berbeco and Lemma Jarudi, two former Arabic-language teachers at the school, the annual Arabic Summer Academy (asa) makes Charlestown High the only non-exam public school in Boston with an intensive Arabic summer-language program. It is also one of 84 primary and secondary schools in the us that teaches Arabic.

Like any language, explains asa Program Director Richard Cozzens, Arabic is both a skill in itself and “a great avenue for giving students a real experience in cross-cultural communication … the focus is on learning and connecting, and on building a community.”

Approximately 30 to 40 students are selected from public schools around Boston for the tuition-free program. After 142 instruction hours in language and culture, students graduate with the equivalent of a full year of Arabic instruction. Federal funding comes from the Startalk program, which was launched in 2006 to help increase the number of us citizens learning critical-need foreign languages.

“Because the program is free we get a huge diversity of participants in terms of socioeconomic background, academic experience, languages spoken at home, race and where they are from in the Boston area,” comments Lizz Huntley, a lecturer in Arabic at Cornell University who directed the asa from 2011 to 2016 and currently serves as curriculum director. Students spend five hours a day, six days a week, studying Arabic language, culture, history and geography, with daily cultural clubs led by the teachers. Huntley notes that Saturday field trips to farmers’ markets with Arab vendors or to local mosques not only helps the students practice their Arabic but also helps humanize what they are studying. “They see that Arabic is not just something for when they go abroad, but it’s also something they can use in their own city.”

“The students are making real connections between themselves and what they are learning about the language and culture,” affirms Sarah Rangwala, the Arabic-language teacher at Charlestown High as well as an asa instructor. “Any study of a world language is a great way to learn how to recognize and understand different perspectives,” adds Rangwalla. “For high-school students it is often one of the first times they are exposed to a different way of seeing the world.”

“This class has taught me to understand not only the Arabic language but also the culture and religion,” comments 11th-grader Catalina Ortiz-Sierra, now in her second year of Arabic at Charlestown High. “America is based on immigrants, and a part of them are Arabs, and if we are all immigrants, we need to understand each other.”

“This was really the beginning of area studies with the idea being that Arabic should be taught as a language, not only in its classical but also in its contemporary idiom,” says William Granara, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “This was the new generation,” he adds. Thanks also in part to new vinyl and magnetic-tape recording technology, the audio-lingual method emerged at this time, and “it wasn’t just reading a dead text, it was interacting with a language.”

The 1960s brought further changes. In 1963 the American Association of Teachers of Arabic formed and began to professionalize the teaching of Arabic. A series of teacher workshops from 1965 to 1967 led to the publication of the textbook Elementary Modern Standard Arabic as well as a college-level Arabic proficiency exam. In 1968 a consortium of eight American universities founded the Center for Arabic Study Abroad.

The 1979 Carter Commission on International Studies and Foreign Languages marked the beginning of the proficiency movement when it concluded: “America’s incompetence in foreign languages is nothing short of scandalous and it is becoming worse.” This introduced an element of radical new classroom strategies. “It’s not texts anymore, its communications,” explains Allen, who became the national proficiency trainer in Arabic for the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages from 1986-2002.

When Allen held his first workshop in Arabic proficiency methods at The Ohio State University in 1986, many of the leading Arabic scholars showed up, including Peter Abboud, Ernest McCarus and R. J. Rumunny. “Those guys immediately realized that what they had done in the 1960s and 1970s modernized the study of Arabic, but what they hadn’t done was to get entirely away from the grammar-based approach. What proficiency did was turn this whole thing on its head. They now had to figure out how to teach Arabic for communication purposes,” says Allen.

“Today, you want to prepare a student to deal with the realities of Arabic as it is used in the 21st century,” explains Professor Munther Younes of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In contrast to Al-Kitaab, the most successful contemporary Arabic-language textbook, Younes fully integrates formal, written Modern Standard Arabic (fussha) with spoken Egyptian and Levantine dialects (ammiya). “This is what best serves the modern generation of students,” he says.

Arabic studies today are a far cry from their mid-16th- century beginnings as a tool to interpret Biblical texts. According to the Modern Language Association, Arabic is now the fastest-growing language studied at us colleges and universities. More than 35,000 students are enrolled in courses, a number that grew 126 percent from 2002 to 2006, and another 46 percent by 2009. Arabic is now the eighth most-studied language in the us and, as of 2013, 84 primary and secondary schools across the country offered Arabic-language classes.

“I was never really aware of the history of Arabic-language instruction in the us,” confesses Lizz Huntley, a lecturer at Cornell and former director of the Charlestown High School Arabic Summer Academy in Charlestown, Massachusetts. She recalls when she and the program’s founder, Steven Berbeco, were teaching a group of college students at the Harvard University campus. “When he told them that the first classes in Arabic began at Harvard, it was funny to see how the students all suddenly sat up a bit straighter, as though they realized that they were part of something much bigger than themselves,” explains Huntley. “It was wonderful to see them take pride in that history.”

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In Central Asia’s mountains, heritage and folklore show a centuries-old respect for the most elusive—and ecologically vulnerable—of the vast region’s wild predators: Panthera uncia, the snow leopard. In August delegates from 12 countries met at the Second International Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Forum in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to advance increasingly successful collaborations in government, education, wildlife management and law enforcement.
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Rolling waves are breaking on the beach. It could be a Mediterranean scene if not for the vast wall of snow-capped mountains across the waters of Issyk Kul, the world’s second-largest mountain lake, in the landlocked Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan. Along its north shore, in the small town of Tamchy, some 30 children, aged about three to nine, wait on rows of benches inside the colorfully painted Jash Muun Kindergarten building near the beach. It’s a sunny afternoon in late August, still summer-holiday season, yet their parents have brought them here for a special presentation. Environmental educator Nurzat Iskakova, from the German nongovernmental organization Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (nabu), has come to talk about a native animal so elusive and rare that few people ever catch as much as a fleeting glimpse of it in the wild: ak ilbirs, “white panther” in Kyrgyz and, in English, the snow leopard. To the children, it is as if Iskakova is telling them about a mythical creature from a fairy tale. Wide-eyed, they listen.

A few hours by car from Tamchy, along what was once part of the Silk Roads that connected East Asia with the Middle East and Europe, signs and statues depicting snow leopards are easy to spot. There is even a café named Ak Ilbirs.

In the capital, Bishkek, faces of snow leopards peer out from billboards, largely unnoticed by drivers and pedestrians navigating traffic that seems to flow as wild as whitewater mountain rivers. A few people find a calm escape near the city’s Philharmonic Hall, where on its spacious square, the glow of the evening sun sparkles the fountains and washes in gold a monument to the national epic hero Manas. Nearby is a series of contemporary public artworks, set on a small park strip called Youth Alley.

One sculpture draws attention—it’s new. It depicts a life-sized snow leopard, not much taller than a Labrador retriever, and compared to other members of the “big cats” family such as lions, it seems rather small. Constructed of welded hexagonal screw nuts, it invites stroking, selfies and toddlers climbing onto its back.

“People are supposed to touch it. That’s why it is on the ground,” says Nikolai Cherkasov, the 29-year-old local artist. “We did not want to build a monument for a dying animal,” he explains. Rather, he adds, he wanted something that encourages a relationship—and action. Under his statue, a metal tag reads, in Kyrgyz, Russian and English, “Slowly the snow leopard is disappearing from our mountains. We must all do the best to conserve it.”

Cherkasov’s sculpture, like the billboards along the city streets, was part of the Kyrgyz government’s hosting of the Second International Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Forum at the Ala Archa State Residence, a park-like venue for state receptions on the outskirts of the capital. The national flags of each of the forum’s 12 officially participating countries flew at Enesai Reception House, designed after the traditional Central Asian yurt: Canvas-white and circular with a shallow conical roof, it is an unmistakable symbol of the country’s nomadic roots.

On opening day, August 25, men and women from Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan all chatted and greeted each other outside the hall. Amid the gray suits and business dresses, the occasional Indian sari could be glimpsed, or the robe of a Buddhist Lama, or the orange-, red- and green-striped gho—the men’s national dress of Bhutan. Inside, the 250 delegates listened as Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev welcomed them and congratulated them for their efforts to make common cause. “Today, the conservation and increase of the snow leopard population is the main task for all of us,” he said.

Stretching in and through each of these 12 nations run seven major mountain ranges and numerous smaller ones, covering a total area greater than India. All are habitat for the snow leopard, Panthera uncia, whose only borders are altitude, for it lives mostly between about 3,000 and 5,400 meters.

In almost every culture in the 12 nations, the snow leopard carries deep cultural meanings. For the Kyrgyz people, ak ilbirs is a national icon and talisman, an animal that is even sacred. “The snow leopard is a heritage of our fathers,” Atambayev said. For its strength, it became also a symbol of heroism. Almost 1,200 years ago, the leader of the tribal association that became the first Kyrgyz khaganate was called Barsbek (“Sir Snow Leopard”). Atambayev appealed to his people to respect their ancestors: “The snow leopard,” he stated, “is one of us.”

Other cultures of the region, too, have long regarded the big cat as a mountain spirit, as archeological finds and petroglyphs show. “According to the views of the Mongols, Khakas, Tuvinians and Altaians, the leopard is the representative of the higher heavenly forces on earth. It became a totem, an ancestor and the protector of the family,” explains ethnographer Yuri Loginov in an interview with the Kyrgyz youth magazine New Faces. Living side by side with the snow leopard was a sign of distinction.

The Snow Leopard

The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) belongs to the genus Panthera together with lions, tigers, jaguars and other leopards. Interestingly, the snow leopard is genetically more closely related to the tiger (Panthera tigris) than it is to its namesake, the leopard (Panthera pardus). The snow leopard is distinct from other Panthera members because of its inability to roar, its uniquely thick and light-colored coat and its long bushy tail that helps it keep balance when jumping from rock to rock. While from head to tail base snow leopards only measure somewhere between 90 to 115 centimeters, the tail itself can be 100 centimeters. Snow leopards are smaller than the other big cats, with a shoulder height of around 60 centimeters and a weight of 27 to 55 kilograms. Their thick fur and stocky bodies adapt them perfectly to the extreme environments of mountain ranges such as Altai, Himalaya, Hindu Kush, Karakorum, Kunlun, Tien Shan and Pamir. Usually, snow leopards are solitary. The home range of a single snow leopard can vary from 12 to 1,000 square kilometers. Wild prey are mainly ibex, argali and blue sheep, as well as marmots.

In Mongolia, calling the “guardian of the mountains” by its actual name is viewed as disrespectful even today, says Mongol shaman Buyanbad-rakh, adding that people there instead use descriptive names such as “spotted fur coat.” Lama Danzan-Norbu, from the Siberian Russian Republic of Buriatia, says, “The snow leopard is a symbol of justice, an embodiment of everything pure in our mountains.”

The snow leopard’s elusiveness has done much to earn it this mystical reputation. Inhabiting some of the most remote mountains on earth, much covered by ice and snow, its gray-white coat spotted with black open rosettes provides camouflage so perfect that even at close range it can be virtually invisible. Like a ghost, it seems to appear and disappear from and into nowhere.

Kyrgyz field biologist Kubanych Zhumabai Uulu knows this well. Only after a decade of studying snow leopards in the wild did he see one. “I was waiting for this a long time,” he says, bright-eyed, recalling the moment like a reward for hard work.

As head of the nongovernmental organization (ngo) Snow Leopard Foundation Kyrgyzstan, Zhumabai Uulu’s tasks include tracking and counting snow leopards in the central Tien Shan mountains. His team of trackers undertakes month-long expeditions with strenuous hikes in thin air and freezing cold nights that make high demands on both people and equipment. September, he says, is usually the best time to go. “When it starts snowing in the high mountains, [the snow leopards] descend to lower, more accessible mountain regions together with their prey animals,” he explains.

During each trip, the team covers around 1,000 square kilometers, setting up around 40 camera traps with weather-resistant photo and video recorders that react on motion-triggers. Finding the right spot can be tricky. “We look for overhanging rocks. Snow leopards use them for urine markings,” the scientist explains. It is easy to tell if a snow leopard has been to a particular spot, he adds, because the scent is detectable even to humans for several months afterward.

To find the best position for a camera, one of the trackers may scramble on all fours past the motion sensor until the angle is just right—a sight that has baffled more than one mountain herder watching them from afar. When set, the camera stays in place all winter. In spring the team returns to read out the memory cards.

“Each snow leopard has a unique coat pattern, like our fingerprints,” Zhumabai Uulu explains. This is why, at each location, the trackers usually set up two cameras opposite each other. With pictures from both sides, he explains, they can identify individuals better. This is not difficult: In the Snow Leopard Foundation’s office in Bishkek, on a wall of framed portraits of snow leopards, each has a name.

“This one we call Fighter,” says Zhumabai Uulu, pointing to a picture of a snow leopard with numerous scars on its face. Another is Hunter, for in every photo it carries a dead marmot in its fangs. James Bond “behaved like a spy,” not showing his face to the camera, while Jessica Alba appeared to relish the attention like a celebrity.

According to Zhumabai Uulu, camera trapping is one of the best methods to estimate snow leopard populations. With it, biologists learn about the range of individuals, as well as how they share territory with fellow snow leopards and other predators such as wolves and bears. By counting cubs the biologists learn about population dynamics. Other monitoring methods include dna analysis of feces and interviews with herders living in the small villages and yurts scattered on the high plateaus. The herders “are the only ones who really know how frequently certain animals occur in a region,” says Zhumabai Uluu.

Still, it is not easy to take stock of mountain ghosts. To date, snow leopard populations have been assessed in less than two percent of its estimated 2.8 million square kilometers of total habitat. Population estimates by individual countries, published in 2016 in the book Snow Leopards by Tom McCarty and David Mallon, add up to 7,000 to 8,000 individuals left throughout the mountains of Central Asia.

With diverse methods and limited data, it is thus no surprise that scientists may disagree over both the numbers and their significance. On September 14 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (iucn) upgraded the snow leopard’s conservation status from “endangered” to “vulnerable,” which means that instead of facing “very high risk” of extinction in the wild, it faces “high risk.” Some organizations such as the Snow Leopard Trust regard the move as premature due to insufficient data; others see it as a signal that conservation efforts may be working. In either case, it is no cause for rest.

Back in the classroom in Tamchy, environmental educator Iskakova tells the kids about Kyrgyzstan’s national “Red Book” of endangered species, which lists not only the snow leopard but also the maral, a large stag, and the red wolf, which has not been spotted for 50 years.

The word “extinction” comes up, and Iskakova explains that yes, animals can be lost forever. “Many years ago, there were more than a thousand snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan. Now only a few hundred are left,” Iskakova says. Then, raising her voice with encouragement, she asks, “Should we protect the snow leopards?”

In unison the kids shout back, “Yes!”

“How can we protect them?” Iskakova asks them.

Dozens of fingers shoot up. She smiles and points to a boy not more than five years old. In a soft voice, he says, “We must not shoot them.”

The boy cut right to the chase. Over the past decades, poaching and fur trading were the leading threats to the snow leopard. Well-heeled people, it turns out, are willing to spend large amounts of money in the black market to buy a physical piece of the big cat’s mystical power. Its skin has become a status symbol, and its claws and bones are used for ointments and tools in traditional medicines.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (wwf), a skin can fetch us $2,200 to $5,000, and a skeleton can command $10,000—amounts many times greater than the monthly salaries of civil servants charged with enforcing anti-poaching regulations. As a result, struggling families can find themselves faced with choosing among economics, ethics and long-held beliefs.

In a 2016 report, the wildlife trade monitoring network Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce (traffic) estimated that since 2008 between 221 and 450 snow leopards have been poached annually across the range countries—an average of at least four kills a week. The authors added that the actual number might be substantially higher since kills in remote areas cannot be detected.

“Who kills a snow leopard, kills their own people. Who sells a snow leopard skin, sells their own land,” said President Atambayev, making clear his government’s position and articulating the important role the snow leopard plays in national identity.

Officially, all 12 range countries have protected the big cat for many years, but enforcement has been weak and, at times, nil, as economic and social issues have kept governments from being effective in this policy area. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, for example, former Soviet states had much to do to find their own identities and develop their own systems amid newly gained independence.

Others, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, have worked amid war and conflict to establish the concept of environmental protection. Abdul Wali Modaqiq, deputy director general of the National Environmental Protection Agency of Afghanistan, explains that when his agency started in 2002, “People looked at environmental protection like it was a fashion. It took us eight years to convince them that taking care of the environment is not impeding development. It takes time to rebuild our country. If we wait until there is a hundred percent peace, it will be too late.”

Modaqiq is proud of his country’s accomplishments. For example, in 2002 Afghanistan was a member of only one international environmental convention. Now, it is a signatory to 15 multilateral environmental agreements and protocols. Recognizing the important role of the snow leopard in high-mountain ecosystems, Afghanistan put the big cat on its national protected list and in 2014 declared the country’s entire northeastern Wakhan district a national park—an area four times larger than Yellowstone National Park in the us.

The first multinational step toward saving the snow leopard across all the range countries was taken four years ago, in October 2013 in Bishkek, at the First Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Forum. A much smaller gathering than the one this year, representatives of the 12 Asian countries there signed the Bishkek Declaration, in which they agreed that “the snow leopard is an irreplaceable symbol of our nations’ natural and cultural heritage.” They also agreed on the Global Snow Leopard and Ecosystem Protection (gslep) program’s goal of “20 by 20”: identify 20 habitat areas by the year 2020, each with a “secure, healthy population” of at least 100 breeding-age snow leopards, sufficient and reliable populations of wild prey and the interconnection of their habitat to others.

In the four years between forums, what has happened? “We are midway as far as the implementation is concerned,” says Koustubh Sharma, international coordinator at the gslep-Secretariat, which was formed after the 2013 forum. Its five staff members consult periodically with the signatory countries, as well as with implementation partners, donors and academics, to track progress toward “20 by 20” and other gslep goals.

“We started from scratch. We started with few resources,” Sharma says. Consequently he finds it encouraging that of the gslep’s total budget commitment of us $182 million, the countries have to date acquired some $50 million from both national sources and the international Global Environment Facility.

The funds so far have enabled, for example, the establishment of new protected areas such as Afghanistan’s Wakhan National Park, Tost-Tosunbumba in southern Mongolia and Khan-Tengri in Kyrgyzstan. Existing protected areas, such as China’s 160,000-square-kilometer Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve, are receiving more intensive monitoring. Kyrgyzstan and Bhutan have increased penalties for poaching and illegal trafficking. Across each country, more than 250 people have received training in environmental protection work, in some places with the help of the international police organization Interpol. To strengthen incentives for conservation enforcement, for example, Kyrgyzstan raised the salaries of state rangers from around 4,000 som (about us $60) per month to 15,000 som. To discourage poaching, Pakistan, India, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia have all established dozens of community-based protection programs. National governments have entered into cooperative relations with international organizations including the Snow Leopard Trust, Snow Leopard Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, Panthera, wwf, and nabu.

One goal, Sharma adds, already has been exceeded: The range countries have identified not just 20, but 23 snow leopard habitats with potentially healthy populations—depending on the implementation of wildlife-management plans by 2020. To date, six of the 12 countries—Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Bhutan and Nepal—have completed “blueprints of how snow leopard populations can be secured while at the same time ensuring the development of the local communities,” Sharma explains.

One of the most critical challenges is what conservationists call “human-wildlife conflict” and what 38-year-old herdswoman Mahabat Isalieva calls the threat to her family’s livelihood. Isalieva lives with her husband and five children in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan, in the Akhtam Valley, where the high plateau reaches as far as the eye can see and income for everyone depends on livestock: sheep, goats and yaks.

Isalieva takes care of the family’s small farmhouse while her husband spends his days with the herds in the mountain pastures. In the evening, when the sunset illuminates mountains and sky in all shades of red, pink and purple, he returns the livestock to the corrals. There, behind the high clay walls, the animals spend their nights, safe from wolves, jackals and bears—but not from snow leopards, which are strong jumpers. Isalieva points to the scratch marks on one of the top corners of the corral.

“Here it got in,” she says, furrowing her brow. Just thinking about it seems to make her angry. Last winter, she says, a snow leopard came almost weekly to raid the corral. One time she saw it, and for Isalieva it is no mystical memory: Altogether her family lost seven sheep and goats worth about a month’s income. The family worried that the snow leopard would return the next winter.

“Without the conservation efforts, the only solution for us would be to kill the snow leopard,” says the herdswoman. The family got help when it reported the incident to Burgut (Golden Eagle), a local ngo that helped the family with a simple, effective solution: a wire mesh over the top of the corral.

Across all range countries, snow leopards often prey on slow-moving domestic livestock due to both ease and, in some places, a shortage of wild prey. While predator-proofing corrals is one way to address human-wildlife conflicts, another is livestock insurance, through which owners can insure individual animals or proportions of herds.

Alternative sources of income are also part of conservation models. These include tourism services such as sustainable hunting, guided hiking and game viewing or wildlife photography expeditions. Burgut, founded in 2013, applies all of these concepts in Tajikistan. Sixteen herders from three villages work not only as rangers to prevent poaching but also as tour and hunting guides. Burgut uses the revenues to pay them for their services and invests the surplus in the communities by buying new books for schools and appliances or medication for hospitals, for example.

“Our big dream is it to supply the communities with electricity. We are saving to build a 100-kilometer-long power supply line,” says Makhan Atambaev, the ngo’s chairman and head of the rangers. In the past four years, he says, conservation has become a significant part of local livelihoods, and this is reflected in wildlife numbers.

“In 2012 we counted around 300 wild ungulates in the area. Now it’s close to 1,500,” Atambaev reports. This helps snow leopards, he explains, because wild ungulates such as Siberian ibex and Marco Polo sheep are the cat’s most important prey in the region. And indeed, the predator is returning. “A few years ago, there were no snow leopards in our mountains. Now there are at least six,” Atambaev says with visible pride.

Another alternative-income model for mountain communities comes from the us-based Snow Leopard Trust (slt), which in 1997 launched Snow Leopard Enterprises. Participating communities agree not to hunt snow leopards or their prey animals, or to support poachers. In return for compliance, slt buys local handicrafts and distributes them globally via its online trade platform and its wholesale partners. Snow Leopard Enterprises currently operates with more than 400 women from 40 communities in Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and India. The largest percentage is in Mongolia, where participating communities currently protect about one-fourth of the known snow leopard habitat.

Although poaching has been the single gravest threat to the snow leopard, the forum countries acknowledge that the 21st century is rapidly becoming an era of more numerous issues connected to global integration and its ever-growing hunger for natural resources and infrastructure development—roads, railroads and pipelines that can block the movements of wildlife. Add to that the degradation and loss of habitats through overgrazing, climate change, environmental pollution and mining, and it easy to see that the challenges will continue.

Someone who worried deeply about the relationship of environment and economic development was the award-winning Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, who in the 1950s won international recognition for his novella Jamila. During the following half century, Aitmatov both pursued a career as a diplomat and wrote almost 20 novels and novellas. In his last book, When Mountains Fall, written in 2006, Aitmatov used the snow leopard as a symbol for the natural heritage of his people.

When villagers plan to take a group of wealthy foreigners hunting for snow leopards, the main character, journalist Arsen Samantshin, criticizes them: “How often have we put our heads together for the protection of the environment? Whole epics were written about it, but when it comes to money, the ecological oaths are over, for money people are willing to do anything.”

When the villagers scout the mountains in preparation for the hunt, Aitmatov puts a powerful warning into the voice of an elder snow leopard he names Dschaa-Bars: “Don’t disturb us! Soon the mountains will fall and you, too, will fare badly.”

The message was clear, and although Samantshin dies alongside Dschaa-Bars, Aitmatov did not want to let it end like this. As Samantshin’s body is carried to the village to be buried, the body of the snow leopard mysteriously disappears, implying supernatural power. Aitmatov sends the reader home with the picture of Dschaa-Bars, now a ghost, forever roaming Kyrgyzstan’s mountains—much as the snow leopard does today in the cultural imagination of the region and beyond. The snow leopard has become a representative of Central Asia’s ecosystems, a global keystone species, a banner under which nations can gather not only for its conservation, but also for the conservation of dozens of other animal and plant species together with human economies and lifeways.

And while in the yurt-shaped conference hall in Bishkek adults agree on new protected areas and strategies to fight wildlife crime, in the beach-side classroom in Tamchy, kids do some brainstorming of their own.

“Let’s think about what we can do to protect the snow leopard!” Iskakova says, and together they build a “life raft” of ideas. The children write their thoughts on pieces of paper, and those who cannot yet write have the grown-ups help them.

One by one, they pin their ideas on a whiteboard. One of the notes says, “Whoever kills a snow leopard must go to jail.”

Others say, “We always have to pick up our garbage”; “We have to conserve our lakes and rivers”; and “We have to love the nature with all our heart.”

Seven-year-old Adelya Saparbekova, with long dark hair and lively brown eyes, tells how proud she is to share her home country with such a great animal. She rhapsodizes: “The snow leopard has a beautiful skin. It shines in the sunlight.” So far, she has seen snow leopards only on television and in pictures. She hopes that soon there will be more of them. Perhaps then she, too, will be able to see one.

Called a sheneb in the language of the pharaohs, I am a royal trumpet. I was invented to cut through useless noise and let it be known that something important should be heeded. In full-throated blare, I announced to his people the god-king’s arrival on state occasions; I summoned worshipers to religious observances; I even commanded armies on the battlefield. Whereas your modern trumpets play, we sheneb worked for our livings. Our mission was never to make idle toes tap, but to bring order to the world around pharaoh. We were the ultimate communication technology of our day—megaphones, microphones and mass media all in one.

Our usefulness made us the mainstays of war and religion throughout the Middle East. My ancestors spread across North Africa and then into Spain and far beyond. In many places, the sheneb-like nafir still trumpets during Ramadan, and some say your English word “fanfare” actually derives from al-nafir. Many diverse believers expect us to make the final sounds of this world on Judgment Day. This expectation reminds me of the Egyptian legend that it was Osiris, lord and judge of the underworld, who invented the very first sheneb.

Sadly, only two of my family members survive from the long age of the pharaohs. Both of us were buried together in the legendary tomb of Tutankhamun. For years, my brother and I had given voice to the boy-king’s every command. Our different pitches allowed the right people to respond appropriately to our distinct calls, much as you program your cell phones with personal ringtones. Do not doubt, however, that I commanded the greater respect, as established by my fancier uniform. I, glistening in silver and gold, am the general; my little brother is my adjutant. I stand 58.2 centimeters tall, whereas he is shorter and made of copper alloy. My shape resembles, quite deliberately, a tall lotus in bloom. In fact, the unmistakable design of Nymphae caerulea Savigny has been pressed indelibly into my bell. There, too, a pair of my pharaoh’s many names may be read, recorded in two sets of cartouches that spell out Nebkheperuretutankhamun, followed by one of his royal titles. These hieroglyphs have been oriented so as always to be read from the vantage point of the trumpeter, meaning that no matter who might sound me on his behalf, I am the voice of Tut himself.

As a sheneb, I lack the separate, cupped mouthpiece found on modern trumpets, nor do I have those three valves to vary my length and, thereby, my pitch. This means that I cannot hum a tune, not even something as simple as a bugle’s “Taps” or “Reveille.” My natural voice is limited to a single harsh note (Greek writer Plutarch later likened me to “a braying ass”), but in my day a sheneb’s bold intonation could not be ignored: “Heed Pharaoh, Lord of the two lands,” say I! My voice carried across the Nile Valley, resonated with conviction and communicated in limited pitch, but with long or staccato bursts, rather like your simple Morse code.

Producing this sound was hard on the trumpeter. The trumpeter gripped me tightly by the throat, usually with both hands, and with a firm kiss issued the requisite number of blasts to convey pharaoh’s bidding. This took skill and stamina; in fact, the Greeks later made trumpeting an Olympic sport.

Because I needed to be with Tut wherever he traveled, in peace and in war, I required a wooden insert to protect me from dents and other damage. This body double, called a core or stopper, preserved my shape during the busy nine years of my pharaoh’s reign, and for the 33 centuries since. Painted red, blue and green to appear also as a lotus, this core is removed only when I am called upon to speak for pharaoh. In some Egyptian artwork, the trumpeter can be seen cradling the stopper under his arm while blowing the horn itself. Given my long tubular construction, I am ironically a fragile thing of power—as one of your bumbling modern musicians can personally attest. You will soon learn that after what he did to me, I am lucky to be alive.

Many of you would shudder at all I have seen and signaled. Imagine pharaoh’s palace, filled with people, all answering to my every call. Picture grand processions marshaling under my orders. Contemplate the thunderous ranks of the god-king’s army as it wheeled at my whim. I sounded off at the center of it all, at a time when Egypt was the envy of the world. With me at his side, Tutankhamun restored to pre-eminence the ancestral gods of the Nile after the experiment of his predecessor Akhenaten, who had embraced monotheism. Egypt’s priests and generals found fresh hope in the reign of the boy-pharaoh whose potent voice I was. All seemed well.

Then, in a year now called 1323 BCE, I fell silent alongside my pharaoh. No one knows to this day exactly what illness or injury transformed Tut from living Horus to resurrected Osiris. The news that winter came as a terrible shock, since he had been idolized as the very image of youthful vitality in spite of his limp. Tutankhamun stood 1.7 meters tall, less than three times my own height, but he towered in the minds of his people. He smiled with unusually healthy teeth (a sheneb notices), and he enjoyed an adventurous if abbreviated life. Tut had a great fondness for chariots, and it is still rumored that a violent crash may have injured his left thigh and contributed to his death. No royal tomb was ready to receive him so young, thus attendants piled into a borrowed grave the treasures of this fallen teenager: six of his favorite chariots, eight fine shields, four swords and daggers, 50 bows and other weaponry. They also stacked boxes, beds and model boats. Clothing and cosmetics vied for space next to jewelry and jugs of wine. Even the two tiny mummies of Tut’s stillborn children were stowed inside the tomb. I, along with my brother, joined pharaoh in these cramped quarters—he in the antechamber, but I more prestigiously in the burial chamber, my mouthpiece oriented toward Tut.

Before taking my place beside the royal sarcophagus, I let skilled artists attire me for the occasion. They added to my gilded bell a design showing the triad of Egyptian deities: Amun-Ra, Ptah, and Ra-Horakhty. These particular gods embodied all the worthies of the vast Egyptian pantheon, perhaps as a final repudiation of Akhenaten’s heresy. They also represented three divisions of pharaoh’s army. Thus, the decoration that altered me from active sheneb to funerary offering had the added benefit of pleasing both the priests and the generals of Tutankhamun’s entourage. This must have been the brilliant idea of old Aye, who buried my pharaoh and soon became the next god-king of Egypt.

Do not imagine, in your modern way, that in that dark abyss I despaired. Along the Nile, the buried stay busy. Tut the eternal teenager lived on; I could hear his bird-like ba (soul/ personality) come and go as it pleased, its flight unhindered by the eight meters of rock above us. Sometimes, I sensed tremors as workmen nearby chiseled out more tombs, followed by the faint trudge of feet as funeral followed funeral in the Valley of the Kings. I now know that a tomb begun by Ramses v crossed directly over Tut’s and continued 116 meters into the rock, angling over the tomb of Horemheb (whom I knew as one of Tut’s generals) and eventually crashing into the tunnels of yet another grave! It was like a gigantic ant farm.

Yet, not every sound was welcomed. Three times impious tomb robbers disturbed the king and me. The first came early in Tut’s afterlife. Brutes broke through the outer doorways of the tomb and rifled through the pharaoh’s personal effects. Their unclean hands pawed at Tut’s jewelry, perfumes, oils, linens and even the chest that contained my copper brother in the antechamber. Thankfully, local authorities swooped in and restored order to the violated sepulcher. The heavy doors were resealed, only to be breached a short time later by more determined thieves. They prowled the entire tomb, passing right by me on their way to the so-called treasury.

Much was taken, but so were some of the robbers. I suppose these captives were tortured and then impaled according to custom. A great deal is known about the tomb robbers of ancient Thebes thanks to the survival of their case files. Papyrus records immortalize their misdeeds. I am ashamed to say that a sheneb player named Perpethewemōpe was among the worst of these thieves. He dared supplement his wages by plunder and even falsely accused a fellow trumpeter named Amenkhau, with whom he had a grudge.

In Tutankhamun’s tomb the mess was heartbreaking. The royal scribe Djehutymose inventoried the disheveled tomb and hastily repacked its contents, leaving me beside the king’s burial shrine, wrapped in reeds beneath a beautiful alabaster lamp. There I lay contented until the third— and worst—of the plunderings.

For a very long time the funerals had ceased, but then the digging began again. I noted the noise of tramping feet above and wondered what pharaohs now were seeking their rest. Little did I know that a new kind of grave robber was looking for me. I heard their leader long before I saw him. He spoke an alien language, and he directed his band of thieves with annoying patience, as though he had no concern at all for the necropolis police. He called himself “Howard Carter,” “Englishman” and “archeologist.” According to his strange calendar, his gang found the first hidden steps leading down to Tutankhamun’s tomb on November 4, 1922. I could hear their scrabbling and their excited chatter, and then it suddenly stopped. For some reason, the men reburied the entrance they had found. I learned later that the looters had decided to wait for the arrival of Howard Carter’s overlord, a rich man with almost as many names and titles as Pharaoh: “George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon.” When he and his daughter Evelyn arrived, the shoveling began again in earnest. A few days later, I heard someone bang a hole through the antechamber door; the next day, the robbers entered. From the other side of the sealed passageway to the burial chamber, I could hear them.

Knowing something of tomb robbery, I was not surprised by what transpired next. Late one night, three of the band—Carter, Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn—tunneled into the burial chamber looking for the body of Pharaoh. I bristled as they stepped past me, taking note of their faces in the pale but painful flicker of their candles. Light of any kind had long been banished from my world. I wanted to sound an alarm but could not myself remove the protective core inside my throat.

Muted, I watched the robbers creep away. They painstakingly concealed the breach they had made in the door as if to deceive the necropolis police. Many months would pass before two of them came back; the third had apparently died in the meantime from the infected bite of an insect, and his demise was immediately blamed on Tut, just as I would eventually be accused of killing Howard Carter—along with 60 million other of his fellow humans.

On February 16, 1923, Carter and his crew “officially” opened the burial chamber in the presence of a small audience seated comfortably in the antechamber. Few of these spectators knew anything about the secret intrusion made some weeks earlier, so the robbers feigned surprise at everything they found, including me. I was scooped from the floor and studied, as recorded in Carter’s notes. I was given an unpleasant cleansing in ammonia and water; my wooden core was treated with something called celluloid. In a letter he later wrote, Carter let slip another of his little secrets involving me: “Though I am no expert with such musical instruments, I managed to get a good blast out of it which broke the silence of the Valley.” Yet the alarm I finally sounded (in Tut’s name, you recall) brought no one—no necropolis police, no royal troops, no one at all. Where had they all gone? Incensed at such insubordination, I soon was posted to the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, 600 kilometers away from the crypt and king to whom I still belonged.

I fumed without another sound until February 1933, when I was summoned before a visitor named Percival Kirby, who had taken a keen interest in all the musical instruments of Africa. Naturally, he wished to study me. With the encouragement of my museum keeper, this professor put me to his lips and the one loud note that he produced was, on your Western musical scale, a C.

Six years later, I spoke up again, but in a strange new way. A radio pioneer named Rex Keating arranged for me to broadcast a message from the Cairo Museum that would be heard all around the world. Keating, of course, knew that I could only issue a single note, and this he deemed unworthy of the event. So, he allowed a military trumpeter stationed in Egypt to stuff a modern mouthpiece down my throat in order to play some sort of tune. During the second rehearsal, the strain was too much, and I cracked. Then and there, in the presence of a latter-day pharaoh named Farouk, I fell to pieces. The horrified king, trumpeter and museum staffers dropped to their knees and scrambled to recover my broken remains. All witnesses to this disaster were sworn to secrecy, lest the world be outraged at my mistreatment. While experts labored feverishly to restore me to life, much as Isis had done for Osiris, Keating searched for a more reliable musician. He chose a British bandsman named James Tappern, who treated me with greater respect according to my superior rank.

At the appointed hour on an April evening in 1939, Keating and Carter’s old associate Alfred Lucas introduced me to millions of rapt listeners. A BBC announcer with a sonorous voice intoned with all the gravity he could muster: “The Trumpets of Pharaoh Tutankhamun! Lord of the Crowns, King of the South and North, Son of Ra!” On cue, trumpeter Tappern, using a modern mouthpiece now held safely in place by cotton batting, teased from me notes I had never heard in my life. I was quite shrill, climbing in flourishes well above my native C, all to Keating’s great satisfaction. Tappern made me perform something called the “Post-horn Gallup,” a lively tune unknown to the sheneb of ancient Egypt. I suppose this exploit was therefore historic, if not quite historical. I am told that my performance can still be heard by anyone at any time simply by searching through a communications maze called Internet. On that day my adjutant brother played a little, too, but no one paid him much heed. I, on the other hand, apparently killed.

Many frightened listeners insisted that my voice unleashed a curse, one that murdered, at that very moment, my abductor, Howard Carter. This was nonsense, of course: He had already expired several weeks earlier. No less surprising, many people even claim that I caused the carnage you call the Second World War. My mighty voice allegedly summoned to battle a host of nations wielding weapons no pharaoh imagined. I vow I gave no such order! As I said, Tappern’s mouthpiece gave me a modern voice, not an authentic mandate from either my pharoah or ancient Egypt. Keating had apparently been warned that listeners might misunderstand me, especially given the infamous “Curse of King Tut’s Tomb” that allegedly began with the death of Lord Carnarvon. I must say such talk of murderous mummies reflects poorly on your civilization. Statistics actually show that Carter’s gang lived full lives that generally exceeded the norms of the time: Carnarvon died at 57, Carter at 65, Lucas at 78, and Lady Evelyn at 79.

I have only performed twice more since that day. In 1941 I sounded a few notes as part of an acoustic experiment conducted at the Cairo Museum. Later, in January 1975, I blared another brief solo. The trumpeter, famed musician Philip Jones, said of me: “Its sound was not exactly melodious ... but it was probably the most thrilling experience I shall have as a trumpet player.”

Probably? Can you think of anything grander than touching your lips to the sheneb of Tutankhamun? I am sure he spoke in jest—after all, I am the horn of Africa. Those present were among the last ever to hear a sound from an ancient civilization.

Now, given my advancing age and recent misadventures, I may never sound again, although, in the fashion of your civilization, I have been on tour for some time now. I have been traveling first class again, learning along the way that beyond my native Nile, many lands exist. Your towns are of course much harder to pronounce than my Tjeb-nut-jer, Hut-Tahery-Ibt, and Taya-Dja-yet. Go ahead, try to say them: Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Dallas, London, Melbourne. I find the fan-frenzied exhibitions in these exotic places fascinating from my side of the glass. Children no older than Tut when he ruled an empire crowd around my case, their mouths blowing into their little fists as if to make me speak. Kids naturally appreciate anything meant to make a noise. They jostle and joke about mummies and curses, while their elders hum a trumpet-laden parody linked to a certain Steve Martin and his band, the “Toot Uncommons.” Apparently, Tut was once celebrated in a festival called Saturday Night Live. I watch these antics indulgently, mindful that you honor Nebkheperure Tutankhamun in your outlandish way even as I, still dressed for his funeral, cherish for eternity his memory in my traditional fashion.

At first impression, the Sahara appears to be lifeless, with golden sand dunes stretching out as far as the eye can see. Yet it is one of the places where I have felt closest to the past of humanity.

We were fortunate during this part of a journey in southeast Algeria to have a helicopter made available by the Algerian army for some 12 hours over Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site of outstanding scenic, historical and geological interest. It has one of the largest and best-preserved groupings of prehistoric cave art in the world, more than 15,000 drawings and engravings that record climatic changes, animal migrations and the evolution of human life on the edge of the Sahara from 8,000 to about 1,500 years ago. It is also, in parts, an island of life that harbors the endemic Saharan cypress, one of the rarest trees in the world.

From on high, it was possible to see how this vast plateau ends abruptly in what resembles a cliff face that in turn is slowly being eaten away by erosion. As compacted sand disintegrates, it adds to the desert. In other areas, deep ravines have been cut through the plateau by rivers that flowed thousands of years ago.

—Sebastião Salgado

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For students: We hope this guide sharpens your reading skills and deepens your understanding.For teachers: We encourage reproduction and adaptation of these ideas, freely and without further permission from AramcoWorld, by teachers at any level.Common Core Standards met in this lesson: RI9-10.2, RI9-10.5, RI9-10.8, L9-10.4 (see details below).—The Editors

Hieroglyphs are fascinating. Developed millennia ago, they seem to intrigue every new generation of learners. They also attract the attention of scholars, having done so for many centuries. "Arab Translators of Egypt's Hieroglyphs" asks who, over the course of these centuries, was able to unlock the meanings of the hieroglyphs? How much did they understand? And when did they understand it? Writer Tom Verde set out to answer these questions, and by reading his article, you should be able to answer them yourself.

But getting there from here (not having read the article) to there (being able to answer who knew what when) presents its own challenges. "Arab Translators of Egypt's Hieroglyphs" looks at the work of many people who lived and studied in different centuries, and understood varying aspects of the hieroglyphs. Covering such a long period of time, and so many different perspectives—not to mention the complexity of the hieroglyphs themselves—can make for challenging reading. These activities are here to help you learn from Verde's article. By the time you finish them, you will be able to:

Determine the central idea of the article and of each of its segments.

Identify and evaluate evidence provided to support a claim.

Determine the meaning of words based on roots and context clues.

Explain how hieroglyphs convey meaning and what made it so difficult to translate them.

Part I: The Introduction (Note: Each part of the article that the Classroom Guide indentifies begins with a large capital letter. There are five parts to the article.)

Just by reading the first five paragraphs of "Arab Translators of Egypt's Hieroglyphs," it is easy to see that the article covers a lot of ground. Part I (the first five pargraphs) begins with Jean-François Champollion in Paris in 1822, then reaches back to Ibn Wahshiyya al-Nabati in the 900s, and then jumps to Okasha El-Daly today. Why? To answer, write the three names on a sheet of paper, leaving space after each. Then read the five paragraphes comprising Part I. After each of the three names, write a sentence stating what was signficiant about each man. None of them lived during the time the Egyptian hieroglyphs were created. Why, then, are they part of the introduction of the article? To answer that question, find and highlight the place in these paragraphs where Verde states the thesis—the central idea of the article you are reading—and the questions he raises that he intends to answer.

Part II: The History of the Hieroglyphs

Part I introduces the key questions on which the article focuses. What it does not do is tell anything about the history of hieroglyphs. That's what Part II does. To get oriented, write down the time span during which hieroglyphs were in their "glory." We know when there were made, but knowing what they meant is a different story. Diodorus Siculus and Plotnius, writing 400 years apart both figures out something essential about how hierglyphs work; they function as ideograms. If you don't know what an ideogram is, try looking at the word according to its most elemental parts: What does ideo sound like? What might it refer to? What does gram refer to? Think about those words that end in gram: telegram, sonogram, mammogram. Based on what you know about these words, what do you think gram refers to? What, then, is an ideogram? To find out if you are right, find the place in Part II where the author defines the term and gives and example of an ideogram.

So hieroglyphs are ideograms, but there's more to it than that. According to Tom Verde, they also function as logograms, phonograms and determinatives. Use information from the article to write a definition of each of these terms. Then, write a sentence explaining what you know so far about how hieroglyphs convey meaning.

Part III and IV: The Arab Translators

Part II moves ahead again, this time to the early years of Muslim expansion—the late 600s, 700s and early 800s CE. Who was Dhul-Nun al-Misri? Write his name and a sentence that explains who he was and why he is included in this article. What texts did he refer to? What evidence presented in the article suggests that he might very well have learned to understand the hieroglyphs? Do you find the evidence persuasive? Why or why not?

Part IV brings us back to Ibn Wahshiyya. Do you remember him from Part I? If not, go back—either to that section of the article or to the notes you made on that section—and refresh your memory. Part IV gives more detailed information about Ibn Wahshiyya's contribution to deciphering the hieroglyphs. Add a sentence or two summarizing his contribution to what you wrote about him earlier. What evidence does current-day scholar Okasha El-Daly provide to support the asstion that Ibn Wahshiyya made this contribution?

All well and good, but not everyone agrees with El-Daly's evaluation of Ibn-Wahshiyya's importance. Who disagrees and why? How does El-Daly respond? Where do you stand on the question? Why?

Part V: Conclusions

Part V brings the article to a close. Just how important was Ibn Wahshiyya in cracking the code of the hieroglyphs. To answer the question, look for waht evidence Tom Verde provides about those who followed Wahshiyya. Explain the limitations of their efforts. In the end, how does El-Daly sum up the value of his own work about Ibn Wahshiyya's contributions? Now what about your own summation? Write a one-paragraph summary of this article. Start with a sentence that states the article's thesis. Then write three or four sentences that lay out the argument that author Tom Verde makes. Finally, write a concluding sentence that summarizes your evaluation of the information you have read.

Common Core Standards met in this lesson:

RI9-10.2Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

RI9-10.5Analyze in detail how an author's ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).

RI9-10.8Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficent; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.

L9-10.4Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grades 9–10 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies.

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For students: We hope this guide sharpens your reading skills and deepens your understanding.For teachers: We encourage reproduction and adaptation of these ideas, freely and without further permission from AramcoWorld, by teachers at any level.Common Core Standards met in this lesson: L9-10.2, W.9-10.21 (see details below).—The Editors

The kanga—beautiful woven cotton worn by women along the coast of East Africa. More than just another pretty piece of fabric, as writer Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein suggests, the kanga is also a means of communication. In this lesson, you will read about kanga, and by the time you finish these activities, you will be able to:

Explain how and what kanga communicate.

Compare and contrast kanga to other forms of communication.

Apply your understanding of kanga as communication to your own clothing.

Design your own kanga.

What Do Colors and Patterns Communicate?

Start by looking at the 12 photos of kanga laid out in the middle of the story. Before you read the captions, just look at the kanga. Divide yourselves into groups of three or four. Have each person choose one of the kanga that is especially liked. Imagine yourself wearing it. Think about what its colors and designs mean to you, and what you would communicate to people by wearing the fabric. Start with the colors, as they convey different meanings. Some of those meanings are personal (maybe there's a particular shade of blue you wear when you're sad, for instance). Other meanings go beyond the individual and are held by a great many people. In some cultures, for example, red is seen as very bold; white is pure; or blue as calming. Looking at your chosen kanga, what do the colors mean to you? What would you be expressing by wearing them? Share your answers with your group. Have group members weigh in about their own associations with your color(s). What meaning do they see in your kanga?

In a similar way, patterns can also convey meaning. What do stripes, or plaid, or polka dots mean in your world? What does the pattern of the kanga you chose mean to you? Again, share your answer with your group.

What Do Words Communicate?

Now go ahead and read the captions that accompany the photos. The written words on each kanga are translated. Most of us are probably most familiar with thinking of words as the way to communicate. How does the saying on your chosen kanga compare to the meaning you attached to the color and pattern of the kanga? If it does not match up with what the kanga means to you, what would you rather it have said?

You and your peers are likely to wear, or see others wearing, clothes with words on them. As a class, make a list of some of these words. When you have a list, try to generalize about the categories of words you see, such as sports teams, places or different kinds of slogans. Do you wear any clothes with words on them? If so, why do you do so? What do you intend to communicate to others by wearing what you do? The article says that the text on kanga can provoke or mediate conflict. Looking at the words on your clothing and the clothing of those around you, do you see such possibilities? Find one or more examples of slogans on clothes that fuel controversy or soothe tensions.

Other Meanings That Clothes Convey

"Kanga's Woven Voices" gets a little less literal when writer Lichtenstein says that kanga can chronicle a woman's life or hold her history and the history of her society. As an example, reread the part of the article about Mariam Hamdani's kanga collection. Do you have any clothes that, like Hamdani's, remind you of a certain time or place? Put another way, do you have stories that go with any of your clothes? If you do not, ask someone from an older generation—a parent or grandparent—if they have any clothes that they cherish and save because they associate it with a story or memory. Share with your classmates your own example or what your elders have told you.

Culminating Activities: Kanga, Text Messages and Social Media

Choose one of the following activities to synthesize what you have learned in these activities.

In the article the author suggests that kanga are similar to more modern, familiar forms of communication. She refers to the writing on the kanga as "text messages," and the giving and getting of kanga, with their messages, as "social media." Write a short answer to the question: In what ways are kanga (or your clothes) like text messages and social media? In what ways are they different?

Design your own kanga on paper. What colors do you choose, and what do you hope to convey with them? What kind of pattern do you design, and again, what do you hope to communicate with it? Finally, write or choose a saying for your kanga. Write an explanation of what the kanga is meant to express and display the kanga designs with the explanations.

Common Core Standards met in this lesson:

L9-10.3Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

W9-10.1Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Driving north out of the historic town of Orchha in the morning, I spotted a roadside tea shop and, near it, this barber who had hung a large mirror to a tree, facing the road. It was a common enough scene: Tens of thousands of independent, casual tea shops serve travelers on India’s highways and byways; outdoor barbers are less common, as they tend to work more often near marketplaces. As my wife and friends got tea, I stayed around chatting with the barber and his customer, showing them a few images on my camera, and then leaving them to their conversation and work. To make this image, I looked to the mirror for a secondary plane of activity, a kind of second narrative, to add depth and complexity. I took variations of this image from different positions, using different lens focal lengths as I tried to harmonize the primary and secondary scenes, looking for a moment when both the barber and the mirror offered elements that added to an overall narrative. For me, the mirror was not just a photographer’s challenge. It was also a way to suggest subtly that despite my many months spent all around India over the past two decades, both on assignment and visiting my in-laws’ family, I am forever looking from the outside in, working to distinguish one plane of experience and meaning from another.

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The Little Prince – as it is titled in English – resonates especially in Morocco among Amazigh, or Berber, children and not just for its familiar desert setting. As one translator explains, "The plot has many similarities to our Amazigh oral tales."]]>
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This year the story was translated for the 300th time since it was first published in French as Le Petit Prince in 1943. The North African languages it appears in include the darija (colloquial Arabic) dialects of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, as well as the Algerian Kabyle and Tuareg Tamasheq languages. In the last decade alone, there have been two different translations into Tamazight, the language of the Moroccan Amazighs, or Berbers, one in 2005 using the indigenous Tifinagh script and the other transliterated into Latin letters in 2007 with the title Amnukal Meiyn.

New adaptations for the stage and screen are still frequent, some 75 years after the book appeared. An animated movie version won a 2015 Cesár, the French equivalent of an Oscar.

Saint-Exupéry, known to his friends as “Saint Ex,” did not come upon those desert images solely from his own imagination. Between 1926 and 1929, he flew single-engine, two-seater planes on various North African legs of the 2,900-kilometer mail route linking Dakar, Senegal, to Toulouse in southern France. Based for years in small coastal posts along the way, he flew over and lived among many earthly manifestations of the images for which The Little Prince is famous. So impressed by what he saw, some 15 years later he recalled them when he sat down to write and illustrate his book.

Readers bring their own interpretations to The Little Prince. This is especially true for Moroccans, who see much of their homeland in the book. Not just that sand and those stars, but that landscape viewed through the lens of a downed aviator awestruck at the sight of an uncommonly dressed stranger.

“Don’t forget that its story was inspired or perhaps even narrated to the author by a nomad whom he had met during his desert voyages,” says Larbi Moumouch, a Moroccan cultural activist and one of its two translators into Tamazight. Although it is unlikely that a Tuareg literally dictated the little prince’s story to Saint Ex, many teachers and parents in Morocco read the book to children, just as they do in countries around the world. But Moumouch believes that Amazigh children are the ones who find themselves closest to home in its pages.

“Yes, the story itself may be universal, but one thing is sure: We Amazigh feel closest to its plot,” says the translator, noting that he and his people have heard such tales in their own homes, told by their own grandfathers. “The plot has many similarities to our Amazigh oral tales. And the word I used to translate ‘little prince’—amnukal—has an exact meaning that corresponds to a tribal chieftain.”

As The Little Prince’s aviator-narrator, a stand-in for Saint Ex himself, writes of his friend’s many questions upon their first meeting: “The first time he saw my plane, he asked, ‘Did you come in that thing? How? Did you fall from the sky?’ ‘Yes,’ I said modestly. ‘How funny,’ he answered. ‘You couldn’t have come from very far then.’” For the planet-hopping prince, just as for the Moors, a broken-down plane was as unimpressive a means of transport as the slowest camel.

It is a fennec fox, not a camel, that Moumouch points to as the quintessential Amazigh symbol of the desert. He notes that the kind of circular, paradoxical conversation that the fox has with the prince—it complains that he hunts chickens while men hunt him, and says that one can see only with the heart, not with the eyes—is typical of the Amazigh style of storytelling.

Lahbib Fouad, who translated The Little Prince using Tifinagh script, agrees. The fact that the little visitor speaks “sometimes with a snake, a fox, a flower, a star [and] a volcano … coincides perfectly with the mythology and the cosmogony of the Amazigh,” he said when the book was published as Ageldun Amezzan.

Ghita El Khayat, a widely published Moroccan ethnopsychiatrist and anthropologist, has her own perspective on the marocanité, or “Morocco-ness,” of The Little Prince. As the founder of Editions Aïni Bennaï, one of Morocco’s leading publishers, she has brought out both its modern standard (classical) Arabic and its Moroccan darija translations.

“I consider it the most important book to be translated into dialectical Arabic, a book of special note because such a story is a gift from mother to child and should be read in what I call the ‘milk language,’” El Khayat says. Yet it is telling that her financial backers wanted it to be published first in classical Arabic. “Even for those who say they believe in its value for children, many wanted it to be written in the language of formal discourse, as if delivered to and for adults,” she explains.

“In fact, I would have preferred it to be translated in my own mother tongue, the darija of Rabat,” she continues, “a language spoken only in the city of my birth, with as many Spanish as French loan words, rather than in a national darija that smooths away all of our particular vernaculars.”

A mail pilot’s forced desert landing could also be either smooth or rough, depending on—as the little prince often said—“On ne sait jamais,” (“one never knows”), until it is perhaps too late. Or in the words of Saint Ex, “The miracle of flight is that it merges man directly into the heart of mystery.” But to penetrate that mystery, one first had to survive the nosedive. As Saint Ex wrote in his memoirs:

"I fell for the desert the minute I saw it, and I saw it almost as soon as I got my pilot’s wings…. The nomads will defend until death their great warehouse of sand as if it were a treasure of gold dust. And we, my comrades and I, also loved the desert because it was there that we lived the best years of our lives."

The pilot’s first professional job was flying over the Sahara in a Breguet 14 biplane with an open cockpit and top speed of 130 kilometers per hour. Most of the time he was accompanied by a Tuareg assistant carrying a sword who would serve as bodyguard if they ever came down in the sparsely inhabited mountains.

France then was still extending its colonial power throughout North Africa and meeting the resistance of Berber and Tuareg leaders in Morocco, Niger and Algeria. News of these rebellions filtered into English in the 1924 novel Beau Geste about the French Foreign Legion’s desert warfare. In this historical setting, The Little Prince might be read as a pacific counter-narrative to such stories of battle and bloodshed.

For two years in the late 1920s, Saint Ex made the desert his home, posted variously at Port Etienne (now Nouadibou) in Mauritania, and Villa Cisneros (today’s Dakhla) and Cape Juby (now Tarfaya) in southern Morocco where he served as station chief for 18 months.

He returned to Morocco in the early 1930s, reconnoitering a direct air route to Timbuktu in Mali and flying the night legs of the Casablanca-Port Etienne line. The pencil sketches he made while waiting for dinner at the Petit Poucet restaurant after touching down in Casablanca still hang on its walls.

In the outstations, Saint Ex wrote that he felt “like a prisoner of the sands, going from stockade to stockade without ever once venturing into the zone of silence … this isolation provoked a strange feeling. I still know this feeling. The three years I spent in the desert taught it to me.”

Saint Ex’s first crash experience came in 1926 on his very first flight across the desert while a passenger en route to his posting in Río de Oro, west of Villa Cisneros. No one was hurt, and a support plane landed safely at the site to take aboard the pilot. Saint Ex was assigned to stay behind to guard the wreck until relief could arrive. “Only two nights previously I was eating dinner in a restaurant in Toulouse,” Saint Ex wrote in his memoirs.

"But what I felt here nonetheless was immense pride. For the first time since birth my life belonged to me…. The sand sea was captivating. No doubt it was full of mystery and danger. Its silence came not from emptiness but rather intrigue, from the imminence of adventure. Night approached. Something slowly being revealed bewitched me—the love of the Sahara, like love itself."

In the book, Saint Ex’s narrator agrees when the little prince says that silence is beautiful. “It’s true,” he says, “I’ve always loved the desert. One can sit atop a dune, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, but something still stirs and glitters in the void.” Among the many oddballs the prince meets in his intergalactic travels is a geographer, bound to his atlas-piled desk waiting for a real adventurer to tell him where to find the oceans and deserts. “One requires an explorer to furnish proofs,” the geographer says. “It is very rarely that an ocean empties itself of water.”

Saint Ex must have been remembering the times he walked across the bleached oyster shells strewn about what had once been the Sahara’s prehistoric inland sea.

Two days before New Year’s Eve in 1935, Saint Ex was attempting to set a new Paris-to-Saigon airspeed record when he crashed again, this time in Egypt’s Wadi Natrun. This experience likely impressed on him the idea of the prince as a sort of lifesaver. After four days, nearing death and fighting thirst-induced hallucinations, he and his copilot were rescued by a lone Bedouin.

“Tayara [airplane] boum boum!” was all he could say through parched lips. After taking a sip from a proffered goatskin but still delirious, he wrote a note for the Bedouin to take to the mine he had flown over just before crashing: “We ask that you come by car or boat as soon as possible.”

This was only the first of the day’s surreal moments. The rescue vehicle ran out of petrol not far from the Great Pyramid, where the Khufu solar ship would be found buried in sand 20 years later. When Saint Ex telephoned the French Embassy from the Mena House Hotel at Giza, the secretary warned the ambassador to discount the incoming call because it had been dialed from a bar after midnight. The Little Prince begins with a similar scene:

I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara six years ago. Something was broken in my engine … I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week…. The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean.

Saint Ex had been based near the Banc d’Arguin on the coast of Mauritania, and the nearby site of the famous shipwreck depicted in the Louvre’s painting “The Raft of the Medusa” by Théodore Géricault was certainly known to him. He would have dipped low over those very waters many times while flying the mail south to Dakar.

It was his third crash, while flying reconnaissance over the Mediterranean in July 1944, near the end of World War ii, that proved fatal. No cause was ever determined, but he perished in the same way he lived the best moments of his life—although he always said he preferred sand over sea. (Once after takeoff from a coastal airstrip, engine trouble forced him to fly dangerously low over the water. His passenger later reported that instead of looking at the control panel, Saint Ex had pulled out a sketchpad and was drawing the two of them as deep-sea divers.) At least, as he explained later, when you crash on sand you never run the risk of drowning. Any Tuareg of the desert, or even a little visitor from a waterless asteroid, would understand that perfectly well.

Patterns of Moon, Patterns of Sun

Written by Paul Lunde

“It is he who made the sun to be a shining glory, and the moon to be a light (of beauty), and measured out stages for her, that ye might know the number of years and the count (of time).” —Qur‘an 10:5 (English by Yusuf Ali)

The Hijri calendar

In 638 ce, six years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s second caliph, ‘Umar, recognized the necessity of a calendar to govern the affairs of Muslims. This was first of all a practical matter. Correspondence with military and civilian officials in the newly conquered lands had to be dated. But Persia used a different calendar from Syria, where the caliphate was based; Egypt used yet another. Each of these calendars had a different starting point, or epoch. The Sasanids, the ruling dynasty of Persia, used June 16, 632 ce, the date of the accession of the last Sasanid monarch, Yazdagird iii. Syria, which until the Muslim conquest was part of the Byzantine Empire, used a form of the Roman “Julian” calendar, with an epoch of October 1, 312 bce. Egypt used the Coptic calendar, with an epoch of August 29, 284 ce. Although all were solar calendars, and hence geared to the seasons and containing 365 days, each also had a different system for periodically adding days to compensate for the fact that the true length of the solar year is not 365 but 365.2422 days.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, various other systems of measuring time had been used. In South Arabia, some calendars apparently were lunar, while others were lunisolar, using months based on the phases of the moon but intercalating days outside the lunar cycle to synchronize the calendar with the seasons. On the eve of Islam, the Himyarites appear to have used a calendar based on the Julian form, but with an epoch of 110 bce. In central Arabia, the course of the year was charted by the position of the stars relative to the horizon at sunset or sunrise, dividing the ecliptic into 28 equal parts corresponding to the location of the moon on each successive night of the month. The names of the months in that calendar have continued in the Islamic calendar to this day and would seem to indicate that, before Islam, some sort of lunisolar calendar was in use, though it is not known to have had an epoch other than memorable local events.

There were two other reasons ‘Umar rejected existing solar calendars. The Qur’an, in Chapter 10, Verse 5, states that time should be reckoned by the moon. Not only that, calendars used by the Persians, Syrians and Egyptians were identified with other religions and cultures. He therefore decided to create a calendar specifically for the Muslim community. It would be lunar, and it would have 12 months, each with 29 or 30 days.

This gives the lunar year 354 days, 11 days fewer than the solar year. ‘Umar chose as the epoch for the new Muslim calendar the hijra, the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad and 70 Muslims from Makkah to Madinah, where Muslims first attained religious and political autonomy. The hijra thus occurred on 1 Muharram of the year 1 according to the Islamic calendar, which was named “hijri” after its epoch. (This date corresponds to July 16, 622 ce, on the Gregorian calendar.) Today in the West, it is customary, when writing hijri dates, to use the abbreviation ah, which stands for the Latin anno hegirae, “year of the hijra.”

Because the Islamic lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar, it is therefore not synchronized to the seasons. Its festivals, which fall on the same days of the same lunar months each year, make the round of the seasons every 33 solar years. This 11-day difference between the lunar and the solar year accounts for the difficulty of converting dates from one system to the other.

The Gregorian calendar

The early Roman calendar was lunisolar, containing an average 355 days divided into 12 months. To keep it more or less in accord with the actual solar year, a month was added every two years. The system for doing so was complex, and cumulative errors gradually misaligned it with the seasons. By 46 bce, it was some three months out of alignment, and Julius Caesar oversaw its reform. Consulting Greek astronomers in Alexandria, he created a solar calendar in which one day was added to February every fourth year, effectively compensating for the solar year’s length of 365.2422 days. This Julian calendar was used throughout Europe until 1582 ce.

In the Middle Ages, the Christian liturgical calendar was grafted onto the Julian one, and the computation of lunar festivals like Easter, which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, exercised some of the best minds in Christendom. The use of the epoch 1 ce dates from the sixth century, but did not become common until the 10th.

The Julian year was nonetheless 11 minutes and 14 seconds too long. By the early 16th century, due to the accumulated error, the spring equinox was falling on March 11 rather than where it should, on March 21. Copernicus, Christophorus Clavius and the physician Aloysius Lilius provided the calculations, and in 1582 Pope Gregory xiii ordered that Thursday, October 4, 1582, would be followed by Friday, October 15, 1582. Most Catholic countries accepted the new “Gregorian” calendar, but it was not adopted in England and the Americas until the 18th century. Its use is now almost universal worldwide. The Gregorian year is nonetheless 25.96 seconds ahead of the solar year, which by the year 4909 will add up to an extra day.

Converting years and Dates

The following equations convert roughly from Gregorian to hijri years and vice versa. However, the results can be slightly misleading: They tell you only the year in which the other calendar’s year begins. For example, 2018 Gregorian begins in Rabi’ II, the fourth month of hijri 1439, and it ends in that same month in hijri 1440.

Gregorian year =
[(32 x Hijri year) ÷ 33] + 622

Hijri year =
[(Gregorian year – 622) x 33] ÷ 32

Online calculators can be found by searching “Gregorian-hijri calendar calculator” or similar terms.

For more than a thousand years, performers, listeners and scholars have recognized tarab as one of the most important esthetics in Arab music.

It has no English equivalent, explains A.J. Racy, author of Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab. It is a term full of subtlety and layered meanings, both historical and regional. At its heart, tarab is about musical affect and relationship: a deep emotional response by a listener that leads to a feeling of connection between listener and performer. In this way, he says, tarab evokes “intense emotions, exaltation, a sense of yearning or absorption, feeling of timeless- ness, elation or rapturous delight.” In short, “ecstasy.”

Tarab appears to have come into use first in reference to early Arabic poetry recita- tion. After the seventh century ce, it came to be associated also with recitation of the Qur’an, which today endures as a highly popular virtuosic vocal art form. Music historian George Sawa notes more than 500 mentions of tarab in the Book of Songs, produced in Baghdad in the 11th century, including instances where listeners wept, laughed, danced and tore their clothing.

Far more recently, for decades during the mid-20th century across the Arab world, listeners would gather around radios on the first Thursday of each month to tune into live radio broadcasts of concerts by Um Kulthum, the famous Egyptian vocalist and mutriba—“one who elicits tarab.” Those lucky enough to be inside the Cairo concert hall often wept openly, shouted and begged her to repeat verses.

The tools of tarab are, of course, musical instruments, from the simplicity of the human voice and percussive hand clapping to hand drums, end-blown woodwinds and stringed instruments that are both plucked and bowed.

As Islam spread west and east, both instruments and musical ideas flowed along trade routes, and they were assimilated, adapted and often locally renamed. Even though the term “tarab” is used primarily in the Arab world, similar concepts are present from Morocco and Spain in the west to Malaysia in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the north to Somalia in the south. Notably these include haal in Persian music and duende in Spanish music.

Europe encountered Arab music through many routes, but perhaps most impor-tantly through the legacy of Ziryab, a ninth-century Baghdad émigré in al-An- dalus, now southern Spain. Arriving in Córdoba in 821 ce, he helped spark a flowering of music that today echoes in a Moroccan music style that some call Tarab Andalusi. Currently linguists dispute whether or not “tarab” is the root word for “troubadour.”

Beginning in the 1800s, Arab musicians assimilated Western instruments—primarily fretless, tonally versatile violins, violas, cellos and basses. It did not fundamentally affect the esthetic of tarab, and the best Arab and Arab-influenced musical performances, then as now, almost regardless of region or genre, remained nearly always highly inter- active events.

A resurgence of Arab music occurred in the early 20th century with independence. The advent of mass media and recording technology— including the flowering of now-classic Egyptian musical films—brought up the question, still argued, of whether or not a recording can elicit genuine tarab.

Today, as satellite and digital media allow the music from Arab and neighboring cultures to flow around the world at an unprecedented pace, tarab remains like a heartbeat, in the words of Syrian master musician Muhammad Qadri Dalal, “the connection between performers and audiences.”

TAQSIM and TARAB Ethnomusicologist Jonathan Shannon

Ethnomusicologist Jonathan Shannon notes that one particular way Arab musicians create tarab is by improvising outside rhythm or meter, and then returning to it. This improvisation is elemental to Arab music, and it is named taqsim in Arabic (pr. tahk-SEEM; plural taqasim). A musician can play a taqsim almost anywhere in a piece: at the beginning to introduce it, in the middle between verses or at any time players take turns playing solos.

In a taqsim, a musician creates a melody that explores a sophisticated network of modes or scales called maqamat (pr. mah-kah-MAHT; singular maqam). Many maqamat feature microtones, notes that occur between neighboring notes in Western scales. A great player must know how to play a wide, creative variety of taqasim within any given maqam, and how to transi- tion among several maqamat.

To end a taqsim, the performer must resolve it masterfully, often with a tarab-creating burst of energy that can be subtle and tender or expansive, even showy.

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